Characters / 86 EIGHTY-SIX

A list of characters of 86 EIGHTY-SIX.

Given the First-Episode Twist required to discuss future volumes, expect unmarked spoilers, especially from Volume 1. Also, the organization of characters alone can be spoiler in some cases, so do be careful with that while reading.

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Main Characters

Vladilena "Lena" Milizé

^{Click for Part 2 Look} 

Bloody Reina: Queen of the Eighty-Six

Voiced by: Ikumi Hasegawa (Japanese), Suzie Yeung (English), Fernanda Ornelas (Latin American Spanish)

Lena is a military officer of the Republic of San Magnolia assigned to command the notorious Spearhead Squadron. Various events eventually lead to her saving them from a Suicide Mission ordered by the San Magnolian government as a way to terminate all Eighty-sixers who somehow survived long enough to complete their terms. She ends up commanding the Eighty-sixers after the Gran Mur fell and, after the Federal Republic of Giad rescued them, becomes the Tactical Commander of the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package.

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• Anger Born of Worry: She's quick to chastise Shin for his extremely risky combat tactics.
• Bilingual Bonus: Her unofficial titles at the end of Volume 1, "Bloody Reina" and "Bloodstained Queen," together form a trilingual pun based off the Japanese pronunciation of her first name (what with Japanese having a difficult time distinguishing between "b" and "v" and between "l" and "r"), combining the English word "bloody" with the Spanish word "reina," meaning "queen."
• Big Damn Kiss: She gives one to Shin at the closing stages of Volume 7, after receiving his Love Confession. Later ended up on the receiving end from Shin in Volume 8, to the point that she fell to her knees in shock.
• Bridal Carry: She's on the receiving end of this by Shin in a Volume 5 side story, where he decides to carry her back to base after noticing how cold and exhausted she was. Her fatigue was not enough to keep her from being flustered by it, though.
• Broken Bird: Overseeing the defense of her nation against the large-scale Legion offensive in which millions of her countrymen and Eighty-Six were slaughtered, the destruction of her homeland, the deaths of her remaining family and all but one of her friends weighs heavily on her mind and she often questions her place in the world
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The Gentle Girl to Shin's Brooding Boy. Her kindness and positive outlook on life slowly rub off on him and convince him to hope for a better future for the first time since leaving the Eighty-Sixth Sector.
• Butt-Monkey: Quite a bit of the humor in the side stories is at Lena's expense, which isn't helped by her Sheltered Aristocrat upbringing.
• Cannot Spit It Out: It takes a long while, much to the frustration of all their friends, for Lena and Shin to notice they love each other, and even longer for them to act on it.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: A Volume 4 side story reveals she is an absolute lightweight when it comes to alcohol, as Shin finds out the hard way.
• Car Fu: In the Dragon Fang Mountain battle, her command vehicle Vanadis comes under attack by Legion forces. Lacking any weapons, she orders the driver to run over any Ameise that get in their way, betting that their 30-ton vehicle will easily be able to roll right over any of those 10-ton models.
• The Cassandra: Her belief that the Legion has figured out a way to bypass their shutdown date and is massing forces for a final assault on the Republic is initially dismissed by the rest of the military. Unfortunately, it turns out to be true when the Legion launches their big offensive on the Republic.
• Child Prodigy: Skipped grades right alongside Annette, and rose to the rank of major at the tender age of sixteen. She later becomes a colonel at eighteen, though that was more a formality than anything. She is also shown to have powerful recall, able to memorize entire multidimensional war maps and the enemy's positions on it, as well as predict their movements and move her own forces accordingly.
• Child Soldier: Though she doesn't take direct action in combat the same way the Eighty-Six do, Lena is still only a teenage soldier serving as the tactical commander for the Eighty-Six.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In a very brief short story that takes place during Volume 1, one of her daily calls to Shin ends up catching him while Kurena is sleeping in his lap. While he thinks nothing of it ^note He does, briefly, feel concerned, but can't explain why as he explains to her what's happening, Lena is (unconsciously) clenching a pillow hard enough to strangle someone.
  • After they are reunited in Volume 4, she also shows some mild discomfort over the other females around Shin once it really sinks into her that they've been separated for two years. This includes Frederica, not that she actually views her as a romantic rival, but more that she is a bit insecure that even little Frederica knows Shin on a personal level better than her.
  • She exhibits the strongest traits of possessive jealousy in Volume 7 when a one-two punch of events hits her in rapid succession: she sees Shin talking and joking with Olivia Aegis and is stunned to realize Shin has never acted so comfortably and relaxed around her, and then a passing remark from the mechanic Guren tells her that Shin once had a beautiful female captain named Alice that he was very attached to who looks remarkably like Olivia. This realization sends her into a near-catatonic stupor as she stumbles back to her hotel absolutely convinced Shin sees Olivia as a Replacement Goldfish for Alice. She's self-aware enough to acknowledge that she's being greedy, as she's never made a claim to Shin's heart but still doesn't want another woman to snatch him up, and ends up ashamedly admitting this to Annette back at the hotel.
• Colonel Badass: She's a full-on Colonel as the commander of the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package, and she most definitely proves her chops at it, especially during the Dragon Fang Mountain operation in Volume 6.
• Curtains Match the Window: She has silver hair and eyes, like all (pureblood) Alba.
• Death from Above: Just as Spearhead Squadron is sent on its suicide mission she manages to hack control of the interceptor cannons, allowing her to pull this on the Legion. She maintains it even after being demoted and assigned to a different unit, much to her commanding officer's chagrin.
• Decoy Protagonist: The trailers and marketing for the second season of the anime sets her up as the main focus of the new story arc. This is in spite of her appearing a grand total of FIVE times in Volumes 2 and 3 of the light novel^note her appearances are only Volume 2's prologue & epilogue, and Volume 3's prologue, final chapter, and epilogue.
• Devoted to You: To Shin. As a commanding officer, she can't afford to put one soldier's safety above all the rest, but she makes it clear to him that he is the one she's waiting for at the end of each and every battle. The main reason Lena strives to end the Legion war is to free Shin from the chains of battle and finally heal his scarred heart.
• Doomed Hometown: By the end of Volume 1 the Republic is almost completely destroyed. Lena survives, but her family was killed off and she has to work in the Federacy as a way to continue fighting the Legion.
• Dude Magnet: Played with. By Volume 4 it is never explicitly specified if others among the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package find Lena attractive ^note by Volume 7, Kurena of all people grudgingly admits that she's beautiful. Nevertheless there is an unspoken agreement amongst the Eighty-Six that Lena, for all intents and purposes, is off-limits for obvious reasons.
• Everyone Can See It: It doesn't take long for the Eighty-Sixers and their other coworkers to notice that Shin and Lena have fallen hard for each other.
• Failed a Spot Check: Amusingly, in Volume 7, Lena completely fails to realize Captain Olivia Aegis is a man because the only physical trait she focuses on is his long, smooth hair. It's only after Shin point-blank tells her the truth that she finally takes a closer look at him and realizes the more obvious masculine physical features that he has that she totally missed noticing.
• Famed In-Story: "Bloodstained Queen", "Bloody Reina", "Queen of the Eighty-Six". All are infamous monikers associated with Lena, who has earned a reputation as a tactician with few peers as well as the de facto leader of the Eighty-Six.
• Grade Skipper: It is mentioned in the Black Tag Daily Life short story that she skipped several grades and graduated from university early.
• Hair Antennae: She has two small cowlicks, which help represent her Sheltered Aristocrat background.
• Hypocrite: She starts to see herself as one after Theo calls her out on acting like she cares about the Eighty-Six's when she's not actually doing anything to help them other than trying to minimize their casualties. While Shin tries to reassure her that she doesn't have to feel this way since she's likely not in a position to make any real change to the treatment of Eighty-Six's, it still bothers her and she resolves to fix this, her first step being actually learning the names of everyone in Spearhead Squadron.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: With Shin. Under normal circumstances, blatant fraternization between a commanding officer and a direct subordinate would've been swiftly punished. Fortunately for them, the situation is anything but normal. If anything, their own superior officers tacitly encourage it.
• Insecure Love Interest: By Volume 7 Lena feels like she shouldn't even think about being together with Shin because she is a Republic citizen - the people that made his life hell and stole his future. Fortunately, her friends talk her out of this mindset.
• I Owe You My Life: She was saved from the Legion by Shourei, an Eighty-Sixer Juggernaut pilot, as a child, and while she'd previously been taught by her father about the injustice of their plight, that was where her determination to protect them and better their lives became unbreakable.
• The Last DJ: Lena is one of the few Albans left that still treat the battle against the Legion seriously and treats the Eighty-Sixes as humans instead of subhumans. In fact, her treatment of the Spearhead Squadron (including sending them fireworks illegally) and unauthorized use of interception cannons ends up getting her demoted from a Major to a Lieutenant after Volume 1 (she got promoted again after the wall falls).
• The Leader: The Spearhead squadron and later the 86th Strike Package all answer to her. Her formal education gives her the tactical thinking of a Mastermind type while her kindness and careful decision making resemble a Levelheaded type.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She increasingly becomes one to Shin, who seems to really appreciate the time they spend talking to one another over the Para-RAID. It becomes really apparent in Volume 3 when Shin realizes that the Republic had fallen to the Legion and that Lena was unlikely to survive the subsequent slaughter. It nearly pushes him over the Despair Event Horizon and he's only really saved when he finds out that she survived the fall of the Republic.
• Love Before First Sight: In the anime it's apparent that Lena started developing romantic feelings for Shin long before they actually met face to face.
• Love Epiphany: Volume 7 as a whole is Lena realizing her deep love for Shin. Of course, she also comes to realize that knowing about it and doing something about it are two very, very different things.
• Luminescent Blush: Blushes like a tomato when she realizes she's developing a crush on Shin. Her most spectacular blush in the light novel occurs when she calls Shin late at night on the Para-RAID after her first encounter with the Black Sheep and catches him in the shower.
• Manipulative Bitch: In a surprisingly ruthless moment for Lena, she approaches Annette after their falling out, asking her to get access to the interceptor cannon control network and to upgrade her Para-RAID to be able to sync eyesight. Annette of course refuses at first, before Lena, having done some digging, informs her that Shin, her Childhood Friend whose family she let get deported, is the Leader of Spearhead Squadron, asking if she plans to abandon him again. A frightened Annette outright calls her the devil, only for Lena to retort that so is she.
  • After she's demoted to captain and assigned to a different squadron she continues supporting her force way more than any other Handler, providing them with more supplies than normal and even interceptor cannon support, all without authorization. When her commanding officer tries to rebuke her for it and the complaints he receives she simply replies there wouldn't be a problem if he just gave her the authorization and proceeds to take his career hostage, as she and her squadron have the highest kill ratio and are currently making him look good but the opposite would happen, and torpedo his chances at promotion, if she were to stop supporting her squadron.
• Mirror Character: Volume 7 points out that ironically, Lena has become extremely similar to the Eighty-Six in terms of personal trauma. Like them, she has lost her family and home, and the only thing she really has left is a connection to a home country that she hates and a sense of pride driving her forward. In her case, her pride comes not from fighting to the end on a battlefield, but in being someone who needs to be relied on, which she uses Shin as a crutch for. The members of the Strike Package are very aware of this and are rather worried about her, especially because her trauma is so much more recent than theirs and having never fully processed it, one wrong move could easily spiral her into despair.
  Rito: She's just like us. All she has is her pride, so without that, she doesn't know what to do with herself. But there's one difference... Lena lost everything recently."
• Mission Control: Her main job as handler is to serve as one to the Eighty-Six; though in practice most handlers only monitor their processors and leave battlefield decision making to the Eighty-Six. Lena eventually starts taking a more proactive role in battlefield operations in order to increase her subordinates chances of survival, to the point that, when Legion forces finally broke through the Grand Mur, Lena became a One-Woman version of the trope, taking full command of every processor still alive in the 86th sector to assist in the Defense and Siege of San Magnolia.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's well-endowed in the bust department, with only Shiden beating her as seen in the Hot Springs illustration in Volume 7. In fact, a lot of the series' merchandising and promo images also revolve around her and aren't afraid to get saucy.
• My God, What Have I Done?: While seemingly minor in the grand scheme of things, she's absolutely kicking herself for never thinking to ask the names of Spearhead Squadron's members and only realizing her mistake when Theo calls her out on it after Kaie's death, having referred to them by their call-signs until then.
  • She is allowed leeway here as the Eighty-Six themselves have only ever referred to each other by their call-signs in her presence, and thus wouldn't have known that these names aren't actually what the soldiers want to be called. She still feels guilty regardless.
• Mythical Motifs: Her mobile command center, Vanadis, is another name for the Norse goddess Freya.
• Nice Girl: She stands out as quite possibly the only person in the military chain of command to not display Fantastic Racism towards the "Eighty-Sixes" and actually value their lives, or at least is one of the only Alba to be openly appalled at their horrendous treatment by the Federal Republic of San Magnolia.
• Non-Idle Rich: Lena comes from a wealthy noble family, but rather than hiding behind the walls and pretending everything is alright, she joined the military academy and did her best to ensure the Eighty-Six remain alive as long as possible.
• Not So Stoic: While Lena becomes The Stoic after Spearhead Squadron leaves, there are moments where the old her peeks through, such as when she's late to her normal meeting with Annette and looks flustered as a result.
• Official Couple: With Shin as of Volume 9.
• Oh, Crap!: Has one when she realizes that Spearhead Squadron decides to continue the fight after she saves them from Rei's Dinosauria.
• Only Sane Woman: She's the only member of the Republic military not in denial over the state of the war.
• Out of Focus: Volumes 2 and 3 of the light novel are largely told from Shin's perspective, due to the focus being on his time with the Federacy, with Lena only making a couple of appearances in each book.
• Overranked Soldier: She holds the rank of Major at just 16 years old. Regardless of her talents, no sane military would ever give such a high ranking position to someone fresh out of the academy. Unfortunately the Republic military is a clown car full of idiots who see no problem in putting a teenager in charge of a crucial military sector. Then she becomes a Colonel at 18 years old.
• Pastimes Prove Personality: Lena is often seen doodling in her diary while talking with Spearhead Squadron over the Para-RAID, and following Kaie's death and Theo's "The Reason You Suck" Speech, part of her efforts to get to know Spearhead's members on a more personal level include drawing simple pictures of all their faces. In keeping with the stereotype, Lena is passionate, sensitive, and idealistic.
• Photographic Memory: Is noted as having exceptional memory, able to vizualize and adjust to a rapidly changing battlefield on a three-dimensional space in real time with pinpoint accuracy.
• Put on a Bus: She's absent for much of the Strike Package's operation to hunt down the rebellious Hail Mary Regiment, having been sent away by the higher ups to recover from the mental trauma of seeing so many of her fellow Republic citizens butchered by the Legion during the evacuation of San Magnolia. As such, she's only present in Volume 12 for the beginning, a few brief mentions in the middle, and the ending.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She leads the Eighty-Sixers with good planning and judgment, understanding their circumstances as child soldiers and refusing to recklessly send them to their deaths like the rest of the Handlers.
• Red Baron: By the end of Volume 1, she's famed in-universe as the "Bloodstained Queen" and "Bloody Reina." By Volume 9, she's also called "the Silver Queen" by Major Gilwiese to rally his men after she gives the order to kill all the Theocracy Child Soldiers who won't stop attacking them.
• Riches to Rags: Her family's wealth and status essentially went up in smoke when the Republic fell. Though she didn't really care too much for that lifestyle anyway.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Part of the reason she's able to get away with voicing her anti-government views, even revealing the truth about the supposedly automated drones to an entire class of students despite the teacher's protests, is because her Honorary Uncle is a high ranking officer. Annette points out that this is surprisingly devious for her.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: She's not above bribing other Republic officers to get what she wants for her 86 squadrons, first seen when she bribes a logistics officer to smuggle celebratory fireworks to Spearhead on Revolution Day, and she continues to do so as she continues commanding other squadrons.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: How Lena ultimately justifies hijacking the interception cannons to decimate the Legion forces opposing Spearhead Squadron during their final mission for San Magnolia. The justification actually works on multiple levels; while helping Spearhead survive is clearly the morally correct choice, Lena claims she didn't do it for Spearhead's sake, pointing out that allowing an enemy force of that size to breach their front lines would be a bad thing even by the supremely warped standards of San Magnolian tactical dogma.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Admittedly, it's hard to call Annette a villain, but when Annette calls her "the devil" after she guilt trips her into helping Spearhead Squadron by mentioning how Shin's their leader, Lena promptly replies that the both of them are.
• The Siege: Oversaw the final defense of San Magnolia against the large-scale Legion assault that was a protracted battle lasting over two months. Hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned and surrounded on all sides, millions of Alban and Eighty-Sixers were slaughtered. Were it not for the rescue forces from Federal Republic of Giad, San Magnolia would have been slain to the last man.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Besides dyeing a strand of her hair red, she switches her regular blue uniform for a black one, signifying the loss of her idealism but also her newfound determination. She switches both her uniform and her hairstyle back to how they originally were in Volume 4 after Shin asks her to, as he recognizes that she was putting on a facade that doesn't reflect who she really is.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The first and only person Lena develops romantic feelings for is Shin. Particularly in volume 7, she reflects on her inexperience with boys in general, and a lot of her behavior in that volume can be attributed to the fact that she has no frame of reference and therefore no idea how to properly express her love for him.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Arguably the reason why she falls in love with Shin. Every time she has a monologue about his qualities, she mentions his kindness. She is also able to work around her guilt towards the Eighty-Six and some of her self-worth issues thanks to pep talks from him.
• Skinship Grope: On the receiving end during volume 7 in a bathhouse. With her mind wandering to thoughts of Shin's tanned and muscular body, Lena failed to notice that she had been cornered by the rest of the girls. Fascinated by Lena's pristine skin, the girls couldn't help themselves from taking a feel for it, much to Lena's dismay.
• Sleep Cute: Two short stories that occur during Volume 4 have this. In the first one, she falls asleep against Shin's back, and he takes the opportunity to try and (badly) braid her hair as she snoozes. The second time, Shin is the one who is falling asleep but he unconsciously reaches out for her warmth before she can pull away and hugs her so tightly that she can't escape his grasp, upon which Annette walks in on them and sarcastically asks Lena if they're done and are enjoying the afterglow.
• Sparkling Stream of Tears: Her tears at the end of Episode 9, as she completely lost contact with Spearhead Squadron when they got outside of Republic territory. She did break down in tears when she stopped at the bridge while facing the direction of the setting sun, hence the sparkles thereof.
• Stocking Filler: Easily one of her most prominent fashion traits, with the anime focusing on how she clips her garters to her skirt and the author herself gushing over them in the first volume's afterword.
• The Strategist: She becomes well-known for her ability to strategize, and part of the reason her squadron's losses are among the lowest of all the Processors is because she takes the time to plan for every situation on the battlefield rather than just throw the Eighty-Six at the Legion and hope it works out. Even the losses they do suffer are never without good reason, as Shiden lampshades.
• Student Council President: She has this role in the High School AU.
• The Tease: Develops a fondness for teasing Shin while on standby for operations, though they are careful to keep their banter to things that wouldn't be clear without proper context to avoid embarrassment.
• Tears of Joy: Exhibited these in the Episode 23 epilogue, when she realized that she's finally face-to-face with the team she had hoped to still be alive, moreso with Shin, the man she had the closest connection with back then.
• Took a Level in Badass: When we first meet Lena, she's a well-intentioned and gifted, yet rather naïve and idealistic young woman who finds herself mocked by her co-workers, and even her superiors and her own squadron. After Spearhead Squadron's supposed death, she's much more Stoic and confident, has gained a small following of like-minded military personnel, and is currently the military's top Handler, (granted though, it ain't like the competition's stiff), with no Implied casualties among her new squadron.
  • She's also gotten better at dealing with her racist Jerkass co-workers and superiors, outright ignoring and making no change in expression at the taunts of the three drunks from the beginning of the series, and when her commanding officer attempts to reprimand her for how her strategies require breaking military regulations to increase her squad's survivability, she bites back that if she does make it so he'd get less complaints about her, her performance as a Handler would drop and reflect poorly on him, potentially ruining his chances at a promotion, forcing him to let her off.
• Trauma Conga Line: During the large-scale Legion offensive while leading the defense of San Magnolia millions of her fellow Alba and Eighty-Sixers were slaughtered, her home lay in ruin, her only family killed and the only place and people she can return to she hates because of what they did to the Eighty-Six. All in the span of barely a few months.
• Ultimate Job Security: Lena initially gets away with breaking military protocol because she's the benefactor of Nepotism. It's why she can freely speak anti-Republic rhetoric to a class of cadets without getting punished. Later on, after actually getting demoted, Lena still skates by never getting directly punished due to being the most competent Handler and leading the most effective Squadron. Her new C.O., who relies on her success to get his own promotion, is forced to put up with her insubordination.
• Undying Loyalty: Although technically obligated to obey the orders of the top brass of the Federacy, the loyalty of the Eighty-Six lay first and foremost with Lena. They don't call her their queen for nothing.
• Weight Woe: The Dengeki Thanksgiving Festival 2018 short story has Lena hitting the gym, fearing that she's been enjoying too much Giadian food and she might start packing on weight. Shin teases her by telling her not to overdo it or she won't get to eat schnitzel.
• White Man's Burden: Lena unwittingly falls into this, being the only Republic Officer willing to sympathize with and argue for the human rights of the Eighty-Six.
  • She's completely oblivious to her privilege, that her family status is what allows her to make these type of anti-Republic rhetoric without risk of being punished. This is seemingly why Annette goes from humoring her to finally completely losing her patience.
  • She's also oblivious to her unconscious racial biases. She makes a habit of doing daily calls to the Spearhead squadron, partly out of her interest for their wellbeings and partly to prove that she's not like the rest of the army. They, like Annette, at first humor Lena's request but then finally get fed up after one of their members die and call Lena out on trying to empathize with them when she never bothered to even try and learn their actual names.
• Young and in Charge: Though she is only a teenager, Lena is still the de facto leader of the Eighty-Six. There's a reason why they call her their queen.

Shinei "Shin" Nouzen

Undertaker

Voiced by: Shoya Chiba (Japanese), Billy Kametz, Aleks Le (episodes 22-23 only) (English), Alberto Bernal (Latin American Spanish)

The Captain of Spearhead Squadron, Shin has a telepathic ability to detect Legion drones after he was nearly killed by his own brother. After surviving their Suicide Mission, he and the rest of his Squadron reached the Federal Republic of Giad where they were given refuge. After the group eventually chooses to return to the battlefield, Shin ends up as Captain of Nordlicht Squadron, and later the reformed Spearhead Squadron within the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package. He specializes in close range combat and tends to damage his Feldreß during battle.

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• Ace Custom: His Feldreßs throughout the story has been customized specifically for close-quarters combat, with two large blades serving as its 'mandibles' rather than the usual machine guns. The weapon loadout itself is a badge of his extreme skill - Republic Juggernauts (and later on, the Federacy's Reginleifs) were Fragile Speedsters designed for sniping and ambush tactics, and were absolutely not designed for jumping into a platoon of Legion mechs and carving them to pieces.
• Ace Pilot: Somewhere between a Steamroller and a Bushwhacker, using a combination of stealth, guile, and aggressive close-range brawling to take down his enemies. He's very good at it, especially seeing as he's piloting a not-particularly-advanced Spider Tank designed for sniping.
• Anger Born of Worry: Finds himself much more upset than normal when he learns that Lena deliberately exposed her position to lure the Legion out during the final battle of volume 6.
  Don't tell me not to protect you when you're in danger..I don't want you-you, of all people-to order me to abandon you.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He's considered the best pilot in the Spearhead Squadron, which is why he was chosen as leader. He also physically thrashed anyone who questioned his authority. He assumed command of Nordlicht squadron in a similar manner after an altercation with some Vargus mercenaries, who mistakenly assumed their new commander was some spoiled Giadian noble.
• Berserk Button: The members of the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package, especially the male members, are quick to realize that upsetting or acting inappropriately towards Lena is a surefire way to anger Shin. Bottom line, don't mess with the Queen of the Eighty-Six lest you draw the ire of The Reaper.
• Big Damn Kiss: Ends up at the receiving end of one from Lena, after giving her a Love Confession at the end of volume 7. However, Lena runs away after it, leaving him very confused. In volume 8 they share a second one, this time with Shin initiating it.
• Blatant Lies: When Lena requests that he starts writing his battle reports for her to analyze and come up with better battle strategies with, he claims that he never learned to read or write... while reading a book. While Lena falls for it, in part due to talking with them through a communicator, Kaie ends up letting slip that he's actually just too lazy to write them, leading to Lena coming down hard on him.
• Blessed with Suck: His ability to hear the "voices" of the Legion is immensely valuable, allowing him to pinpoint their locations and predict their attacks. The downside is that he can't turn this ability off and he is forced to constantly listen to the screams of people who've had their minds assimilated by the Legion. Most people would probably go insane in such a situation. In fact this is precisely why so many of his previous handlers quit, as they couldn't stand even temporarily resonating with him. Shin claims to have gotten used to it, however the recent proliferation of "Sheepdogs" in Legion ranks has put a noticeable strain on him. As of Volume 8, he has begun making inquiries with the Giadian military to reach out to other psychic soldiers to help him control his ability and Volume 11 opens with him having a training session with one of his distant cousins, Lieutenant Joschka Maika.
• Broken Bird: Shin is a male version of this. All the events that happened in his life, from being a Child Soldier to nearly getting killed by his brother, turned him into an extreme cynic who couldn't see humanity as anything beyond their lowest point and could not care about anything beyond immediate survival and his close comrades. He can't understand how Lena managed to hold onto any shred of idealism even though she had to be in the same horrific battlefield conditions as him.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The Brooding Boy to Lena's Gentle Girl. It isn't until after meeting her in person and spending time with her that he truly starts to shed his fatalistic mindset and become ever-so-slightly more optimistic about his future.
• Brutal Honesty: He doesn't sugarcoat things when he tells Lena that the Republic is going to lose the war. He turns out to be absolutely right.
• Cannot Spit It Out: See Lena's entry. Just like her, it takes some time for Shin to notice he has romantic feelings for Lena, and even more time for him to act on said feelings.
• Captain Crash: Almost anything Shin can pilot will get destroyed, partly due to his penchant for pushing them beyond their limits.
• Character Development: It starts around vol. 2, but becames much more evident by vol. 5 onwards, with Shin realizing he can't stay the same person he was in the 86th district if he ever wants to be happy or have a future. One of the biggest questions he has to answer to himself is what he should live for, especially after the war is over. By volume 6 he finally got his answer, or at least a temporary one, that is, to be happy together with Lena and show her sights that can't be enjoyed with the war going on, such as the sea. After he finally deals with his feelings, or at least most of them, he becomes more relaxed and overall less cynical over the nature of the conflict, laughing more around his friends and finding the worth of living together with them. Many characters voice their surprise at this change.
  Raiden: You've definitely shaken off that Reaper atmosphere you always had going on.
• Chick Magnet: Played for laughs in the anime. His frequent visits to Sankt Jeder's library apparently attracted a great deal of attention from the local women. More seriously, he does attract his fair share of female attention, with Kurena crushing on him, Annette having had feelings for him when they were children which haven't entirely faded away in the present day, and Lena clearly falling for him not long after their professional relationship starts.
• Childhood Friends: With Annette.
• Child Soldier: Shin joined the military when he was only 12 and has been fighting almost non stop ever since then.
• Close-Range Combatant: See Ace Custom and Ace Pilot. His up-close-and-personal fighting style is extremely unusual, but he has enough reflexes, ingenuity, and pure killer instinct to leave behind an impressive trail of wreckage while distracting the enemy and disrupting their formations.
• Colonel Badass: It is eventually revealed that Lena's memoirs, as shown in Volume 11, are dedicated to Lieutenant Colonel Nouzen.
• Combat Pragmatist: While all the Processors are like this, Shin embodies this the best to make his close-range fighting style successful. He favors ambushing his opponents, using his Reginleif's speed to weave in and out of cover while using his smoothbore gun for covering fire so he can close the distance and use his blades.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Years on the battlefield surrounded by bloodshed and death has made Shin accustomed to the horrors of war. Things rarely phase him, and not for long if it does.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: A very mild example compared to most, but he still has this moment in volume 7. While attending the ball in the volume's final act, Shin catches sight of Lena's newest dance partner, Captain Olivier, pretending to kiss her hand. Despite having been taught basic ballroom etiquette at that point and likely knowing the gesture is only customary (and definitely knowing that Olivier himself has no romantic interest in Lena), he still takes a moment to glare daggers at Olivier, who is more amused than anything.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It's a bit of an understatement to say that Shin's life went to hell the day the Republic stripped him of his rights. He lost both of his parents and was nearly killed by his own brother in a fit of rage. This incident left him scarred both physically and mentally; wounds that were further aggravated by his years on the battlefield as a Child Soldier. It got so bad that Shin effectively blocked out many of his memories from before the war just so he wasn't constantly reminded of what he had lost.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The major focus of his character development in Volumes 2 and 3 is him trying to discover a new reason to live after killing his brother and escaping the Republic. Lerche eventually calls him out on this, and cuts right to the chase by showing she's figured out what he really wants: to find happiness with another person. Namely, Lena.
• Devoted to You: To Lena. No matter how dangerous the mission, or how deadly the foe, he'll always return to her side. Always.
• Down to the Last Play: His final showdown with the Morpho in the latter portion of Volume 3 (Episode 21 of the Anime). His Reginleif only had one shot left in its main cannon, and its engine and legs have been pushed to their limits; while his adversary still had most of its weapons operational. It took the sudden artillery support from the remnants of San Magnolia, and Frederica's unique connection with her liege Kiriya, for Shin to close the distance towards the Morpho for a Colossus Climb, in order to land the final shot on the Morpho's central processor to finally put it down.
• The Dreaded: During his stint as a Republic processor, he has acquired a certain level of infamy due to his habit of "breaking" the handlers assigned to him, to the point where one of them immediately committed suicide.
  • To the rest of the members of the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package in regards to how they behave around Lena. It is an unspoken rule that she's strictly off-limits. Most endeavor to avoid upsetting or acting inappropriate with Lena out of fear of violent reprisal from Shin.
• Drives Like Crazy: Shin makes a habit of pushing any mech he's piloting far beyond its recommended operational parameters. While this pays off big time in combat situations, the resulting maintenance issues have caused no small amount of grief for the mechanics unfortunate enough to get saddled with the aftermath of Shin's insane maneuvers.
• Everyone Can See It: It eventually becomes so blatantly obvious that he and Lena have fallen for each other that even the most casual observer could see right through the infamously taciturn and stoic Shin.
• Forceful Kiss: Gives one to Lena in Volume 8 as a way of getting back at her for the rather ambiguous response she had to his Love Confession at the end of Volume 7 - that is, kissing him out of nowhere as well. It's a kiss so intense, he even bites her lip and leaves her weak in the knees after pulling back.
• Hope Is Scary: At first he has this mindset because of the fear of wishing for something, only to have said something (or someone) taken away from him like how it happened with his family and friends. Part of his development in later volumes involves Shin (re)learning how to wish for things he wants and to hope for his own happiness again regardless of the risks in the battlefield.
• Iconic Item: The blue scarf he wears to hide his scar is easily this, it's even featured in his Personal Mark.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: With Lena. Their ongoing (and escalating) fraternization is an open secret amongst the Eighty-Six and the rest of their unit. Fortunately they either overlook it or actively encourage it.
• Insecure Love Interest: He spends some time during the Roa Gracia campaign mentally berating himself for even thinking about trying to grow closer to Lena, convinced that he's a barely functional empty shell of a human who can only cause her pain. On the eve of their first major battle there, he is about to ask her to come with him to fulfill his dream of seeing the ocean, but his low self-esteem leads him to change his mind and keep quiet instead.
• Irony: He spent a good chunk of time in the early story thinking that he had absolutely nobody and nothing to live for. The biggest irony is that he is the only member of Spearhead who has not lost his entire family, as it is later revealed he has many distant relatives in Giad who would love to meet him. Indeed, one could say Shin put himself in a hell of his own making, as he initially refused to make any contact with his paternal grandfather and kept throwing his letters away after finding out about his existence.
• The Leader: To Spearhead Squadron. He mixes the determination of a Headstrong type with the calm judgment of a Levelheaded type, making the squad an effective fighting force before and after they meet Lena.
• Lethal Chef: The rest of Spearhead Squadron doesn't allow Shin to be the cook since his cooking tends to be extremely rough. He's good at prepping ingredients, however.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Frederica. Shin is against it at first but they eventually grow to be like this for each other.
• Locked Out of the Loop: He was kept in the dark about the details of the Cicada by everybody out of worry for their lives. When he managed to see Lena wearing it, he was definitely not happy.
• Love Epiphany: Volume 6 is one epiphany after another for Shin, but the biggest by far comes just after the battle with the Phönix, and he is still in immediate danger: For the first time, Shin is actually afraid of dying (as opposed to not caring one way or another), because he knows doing so would cause Lena immeasurable sadness and heartache. He realizes that, more than anything, he wants to live to be with her.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear if Shin's ability to hear "voices" of the dead is supernatural in nature or the result of a highly advanced sixth sense. Members of his family possessed the ability to sense one another and even communicate non verbally amongst themselves. Their research into this would eventually become the basis for the Para-RAID system. Shin's ability seems to go beyond even that, however, as his near death experience at the hands of his brother has allowed him to hear the voices of people assimilated by the Legion.
• Mercy Kill: The reason for his codename of "The Reaper." Whenever a member of his squad is taken out and is still alive, he's the one to put them out of their misery. This even applies to Eighty-Six that are turned into Legion.
• Mythical Motifs: The Legion have designated him as a special target with the nickname "Báleygr" which is an alternate name for Odin in Norse mythology. "Báleygr" means "The one with flaming eyes", fitting Shin's dark red eyes.
• Noiseless Walker: It's noted multiple times in the light novels that he can walk while barely making any sound. Asato Asato herself noted that his footsteps are toned down in the anime to reflect this, as compared to other characters such as how Lena's shoes click against the floor. It later seems to be an inborn trait of the Nouzen clan, as his grandfather, father, and brother could all do this too, but notably not his mother, who was from the Maika family.
• Noodle Incident: Graduates of the Federacy's military academy still remember Shin's infamous "zero point failure". This incident occurred during a training exercise where Shin tried to jump a 50 ton Vanagandr over an obstacle. This kind of maneuver was not what the Vanagandr's designers had in mind when they built it and Shin basically ended up wrecking it. Shin was unsurprisingly given a failing grade for this little stunt.
  • The anime shows us that the "zero point failure" incident was Shin backflipping the very same Vanagandr over another Vanagandr, sticking the landing but wrecking the legs of his mech. Without killing himself, his co-pilot, or even the pilots of the Vanagandr he lept over.
• No Place for Me There: Shin is unable to properly adjust to civilian life in the Federacy and finds himself drawn back to the battlefield. He feels guilty about having this opportunity for a normal life when so many of his comrades never got the chance.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: How he finished off the Morpho in Volume 3, by shoving the Reginleif's barrel down one of the Morpho's portholes, thus landing the killing headshot on Kiriya inside.
• Not So Above It All: While the others in Spearhead Squadron are passing the time shooting cans and scoring themselves, he's off on the side reading. When they ask him to join, he simply grabs his pistol and shoots all the cans from where he's sitting.
• Not So Stoic: As the series goes on, Shin finds himself less able to maintain his usual aloofness around people, especially after he falls in love with Lena (and everyone notices). He now more often reacts to his squadmates' teasing rather than brush it off, and is more likely to engage in their lighthearted antics than he was before.
  • A less cheerful, non-romantic example is in Volume 6, when Shin is having some serious mental turmoil when it comes to trying to imagine an attainable future for himself off the battlefield. While only a few people can tell exactly what the problem is, literally everyone that knows him can clearly see that something is tormenting him inside and that he's trying to hide it from them.
• Official Couple: With Lena, as of Volume 9.
• One-Man Army: Played with. While Shin may be an incredible pilot capable of cutting through vast swathes of the Legion, he is still just one man in an incredibly fragile mech. There are a number of battles, such as the ones with his brother and the Morpho, where Shin clearly would've lost if not for the assistance of his allies. Even someone with Shin's talents can still be overwhelmed by the sheer power the Legion brings to the battlefield.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • It's rare to see Shin show any kind of serious emotion, so it's rather concerning when he seems almost ecstatic about the prospect of facing his brother on the battlefield.
  • Similarly in the anime he looks absolutely terrified when he imagines his brother's headless corpse attacking him, showing that for all of his stoicism he is still in many ways just a scared little boy trying to come to terms with an abusive family member.
  • At the end of Volume 4, Lena manages to provoke a serious reaction out of him when she tells him that his real reason for not caring about what happens around him is to keep himself from being emotionally hurt after his family was persecuted for being non-Alban in San Magnolia. Volume 5 revealed he actually got upset at her, just for a moment, before he quickly got himself back under control. But this was still enough to cause them not to speak to each other for nearly 2 weeks outside of absolutely necessary military matters.
  • When he threatens Dustin with throwing him to the Legion if he makes Anju cry, Shin does it with an extreme coldness that Anju had never seen.
  • In Volume 5, the first time he shows genuine anger at Lena is during the siege of Revich Citadel when she tells him to take the chance to retreat and abandon her if there's no chance of saving her from the Legion. When he refuses to entertain the thought, she reminds him that he's had to do this in the past for many of his comrades before, including Kaie. He can't really counter what she says but is still very unhappy about it, and even grudgingly realizes he's acting like a child throwing a tantrum.
  • In Volume 6 when Lena keeps insisting in Shin to talk about what's bothering him, he eventually gets angry enough to shout at her, he inmediatly regrets it after poor Lena runs away from the room crying.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: A previous handler of Spearhead Squadron hated the Eighty-Six and purposely gave them faulty information which got people killed. Shin "dealt" with him by turning the Para-RAID's synchronization rate up to maximum during a battle where "Black Sheep" were present. The resulting mental trauma caused the handler to resign and to blow his brains out with a shotgun not long afterwards.
• Rank Up: He starts the series as the Captain of Spearhead Squadron, but ranks don't actually mean much in the 86th District, so it's more of an informal thing. When he joins the Federacy's military, he completes Officer Candidate School and enters the field as a Lieutenant, which is the lowest officer rank (one rank below Captain). By the end of Volume 3, he is once again a Captain, this time a formal promotion due to destroying the Morpho. Volume 11 reveals that he will eventually reach the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
• Red Baron: The Reaper. His call sign Undertaker is also pretty badass too.
  • There's also Báleygr, the codename used by the Legion, it means "The one with flaming eyes" and is an alternate name for the Norse god Odin.
• Repressed Memories: Volume 5's ending shows he didn't actually forget the memories of his family but rather did this to them unconsciously. It is only when he sees the Merciless Queen and hears its voice that all his childhood memories come flooding back to him.
• Riches to Rags: He comes from a well-off family originating from the Giadian Empire, but lost everything when San Magnolia decided to strip the citizenry of all non-Albans.
• Scars Are Forever: The bandana he always wears on his neck covers the scars where his brother Rei tried to kill him years ago.
• Secret-Keeper: In Volume 7 he discovers, together with Vika, that only someone of pure blood of the royal family of the Empire can shut off the army of the Legions. However, Vika quickly assumes this will be impossible because the Federacy killed everyone from the royal family. Shin keeps the secret that Frederica is the last member of the royal family and is currently living while hiding her identity, but he doesn't trust the Federacy enough to disclosure this secret yet, because he doesn't know what they might do with her in order to defeat completely the Legion.
  • By Volume 8 Shin talks about said secret with the rest of the Spearhead Squadron (except Lena), Frederica herself and Ernst. They decide that they should wait for more information, since they don't even know the situation within the Legion base or how they should proceed with the strategy.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The only person Shin ever shows any romantic interest in is Lena. While Annette did have a crush on him when they were children, it was never stated whether he had reciprocated in any capacity before his family was moved to the 86th sector.
• Slasher Smile: Sports one of these upon confronting his brother.
• Smells Sexy: In Volume 9 while on standby for an operation, Lena confesses that she likes to wear his coat because it smells like him and that it helps calm her down whenever she feels anxious. She's partly teasing him, but also clearly attached to it.
• The Spock: He's detached, calm and pragmatic even in the face of death when he makes the choice to sacrifice himself so that the Spearhead squadron can make it to the Federacy and again when they face the Morpho with his distant relative, Kiriya, inside it. He survives both times but gets chewed out by his friends (especially Raiden).
• The Strategist: Not to the same degree as Lena but present. He was raised for a while by an Alba soldier turned priest who taught him martial arts and tactics. He shows a penchant for deploying effective ambush tactics against the Legion when fighting alone and as a commander.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The anime has a briefly seen picture of his family, there we can see Shin takes almost completely after his dad.
• Strong and Skilled: Thanks to his Onyx background, Shin has a high level of natural athleticism. Combined with his training and experience as a member of the 86, Shin is an incredibly tactical and unorthodox fighter both in and out of his Feldreẞ.
• Survivor's Guilt: Suffers from a major case of this due to being the only survivor of many of his previous units.
• The Tease: He is like this in the High School AU where he teases his friends and Lena whenever he has the opportunity. He also shows a bit of this in a side story, when Lena asks him to throw away a spider in her room and he has to resist the urge of putting it on her hair.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Has some with Shiden. The two of them start butting heads as soon as she introduces herself and challenges him to a sparring match. However, they work well while in an actual battle.
• Tranquil Fury: Hilariously, in Volume 8, he finally is introduced to Lena wearing the Cicada and makes verbal threats of throwing Vika (the one responsible for said uniform in first place) in the ocean, killing him with a shovel, or a combination of both, all with his same almost expressionless face. Lena has to call him out and stop him from going further with said plans.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A very sweet one, until the Republic took away his family's rights, ruining the life of his family in the process and making Shin fight in order to survive.

Federal Republic of Giad

General

• Badass Army: The Federacy's military is a competent and highly disciplined force, in direct contrast to the Republic's sorry excuse for an army. They've been fighting the Legion non stop for the past ten years and have even managed push the robotic swarm back in certain areas. This is in spite of them frequently being badly outnumbered and technologically outmatched by the Legion. It's no secret that the Legion views the Federacy as their primary threat, which is why the Legion diverted extra forces to that front in an effort to overwhelm them during the large scale offensive.
• Condescending Compassion: After taking the surviving Spearhead squadron in, the Federacy Government goes out of their way to try and keep them from trying to get involved with their military and live a normal life. Having grown up as Child Soldiers, adjusting to a normal civilian life proves to be difficult for them and while they are eventually allowed in, the military brass continues to overly coddle them because they don't like the optics of appearing to exploit them.
  • Later played with, as the military and civilian leadership comes to respect the desires of the 86 to fight, realizing that they wouldn't be so different from the Republic if they adamantly ignored the desires and choices of the 86.
• Eat the Rich: Most of the Giadian Empire's former nobility had their wealth confiscated following the revolution. The only exceptions were nobles who owned critical wartime industries, as the Federacy could not afford any disruption of its supply chains. This still left the majority of the former nobility destitute and forced to make their way in life without any of their former privileges. The rest of the population is less than sympathetic towards their predicament due to the nobility previously holding a near monopoly on wealth and educational opportunities.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Giad shares a number of cultural similarities with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Its status as a formerly expansionist empire that transformed into a federal republic is also very similar to Germany's history.
• Foil: To San Magnolia. While both nations are democratic nations that are fighting the Legion, how they rule and operate during the war is a different story. While San Magnolia is ruled by a racist government that mistreats all non-Alba and forced them to fight their battles, Giad's government is multiracial where all races are treated equally and work together to fight the Legion. The San Magnolia military is incompetent and are only focusing on defense where they believe they can outlast the Legion and exterminate the non-Alba races, while Giad's military is competent and are on the attack and regaining lost lands from the Legion. Furthermore, San Magnolia news is nothing more than government propaganda that hides the truth while Giad news is independent and serves the public.
  • Also very emphasized when it comes to Giad's treatment of the 86, especially Spearhead. When the Morpho makes its official debut, the only plan anyone can come up with that has a decent chance of success of taking it out is a Suicide Mission, the "suicide" aspect of the plan is treated with the gravity and sorrow it deserves. Everyone involved in that part of the mission is an actual volunteer, and they are fully supported by all military assets available to give them the best possible chance of success. Additionally, every leader and officer repeatedly urges them to survive against the odds and make it back home, and because the allied forces perform well enough and the Suicide Mission succeeds in destroying the Morpho, every member of the Suicide Mission is rescued by Giad forces and thus survives.
  • Even though the most ruthless and callous military officers of Giad may not like or care about the Spearhead survivors as people, they definitely respect and value their skill, capability, and experience, and have no intention at all of wasting their lives.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: Giad was originally a militaristic empire that tried to conquer its neighbors before a rebellion overthrow the monarchy and replaced it with a democratic government.
• Hypocrite: While they're definitely leagues ahead of San Magnolia, over time they're shown to be not much better regarding their treatment of the Eighty-Six. Not only does their support for their liberation from San Magnolia come off as less compassionate and more condescending, but Spearhead Squadron's continued refusal of special privileges, willingness to fight on their behalf despite their previous experience, and their unmatched ability to destroy Legions in droves instils a similar case of Fantastic Racism in some of the Republic's military, due to the belief that they're "monsters". It's to the point that one of the military higher-ups supports having them lead what is essentially a suicide mission to destroy the Morpho, not just because of their skill and experience, but because they figure that no one will really miss them. However, the leadership and other military personnel ultimately value their lives for many reasons and want them to survive said suicide mission if at all possible, and will provide as much support as possible to help them succeed. Ultimately, the massive support they provide proves crucial to the Suicide Mission's success and the survival of the people who went on it.
• Mirroring Factions: Volume 9 reveals that much of the old nobility resents the class system having been officially abolished, and are thus withholding support from the war effort to intentionally draw out the war so that more commoners, who make up the bulk of Giad's miltary, die to the Legion. Once the military is weakened to the point of collapse, it will force the army to ask them for help, at which point they will then send their private military forces in and regain their former influence. This grotesque act of a safe upper class using the Legion War to cull an "undesirable" populace is practically identical to how the San Magnolian government operated, with the only difference being their motivations are rooted in classism instead of racism.
  • In Volume 12, another uncomfortable parallel with the Republic of San Magnolia occurs when Giad's military takes advantage of the desperation of the Fleet Countries' refugee crisis and conscripts a large chunk of their population as scouting regiments which are expected to have a high casualty rate.
• White Man's Burden: The Federacy's views towards the Eighty-Six compared to the Republic swing wildly to this side of the extreme. While the Republic views them as literal pigs in human skin, The Federacy acts like it's their civic duty to uplift them all the while treating them as completely helpless children unable to act on their own. They eventually get a lot better about this, though, realizing that they have to respect the choices and desires of the 86 soldiers once they have clearly had the chance to make an informed decision.

Eighty-Sixth Strike Package

Spearhead/Nordlicht Squadron

General

A squadron of Eighty-Sixes that's been known to have its Handlers resign and even commit suicide. After the fall of San Magnolia, the surviving members ally with the Federal Republic of Giad.

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• Ace Pilot: While Shin is on a whole other level, the Spearhead survivors are amongst the best pilots in the world, with skills honed over hundreds of desperate battles without adequate supplies, equipment, or tactical support.
• Ace Custom: The design philosophy behind their Reginleif-class Feldreß units. Unlike the sturdy, reliable Vánangandrs used by the regular Federacy forces, they're designed for extremely high performance at the expense of armour and ease of use, and were specifically tailored for Giad's Eighty-Six veterans with a modular design that lets individual pilots build the machine that's perfect for them. In the hands of a rookie pilot, they're deathtraps, but in the hands of a San Magnolian Processor who cut their teeth in the Republic's rickety Fragile Speedster Juggernauts, they're absolute forces of nature.
• Badass Crew: An entire Ace Pilot team who are collectively ranked among humanity's top fighters against the Legion.
• Child Soldiers: All of them were forced to fight for the Republic due to the heavy discrimination that happens with anyone that isn't a pure Alba.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Years of battling Legion has made the Eighty-Six used to the horrors of war. Their flippant attitude regarding fighting often putting them at odds with those outside of the Eighty-Six.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: All of them, mostly Shin, have to deal with this at some point or another. More specifically, they spent so much time of their youth fighting that they can't fit in the civilian life anymore, and have a lot of difficulties in thinking what they want to do once the war is over.
• Dissonant Serenity: The surviving members of Spearhead are remarkably upbeat during their preparations for the Special Reconnaissance Mission — chatting about the weather, reminiscing fondly on the time they've spent together, and in general acting like they're about to leave on a cross-country road trip. By this point we already know how they've managed to make peace with their assumed fate, but it's still disconcerting to see them act so cheerful about what was intended to be their death march.
• Fragile Speedster: San Magnolian Juggernauts were designed to exploit the superior piloting skills of human Processors by people who had a limited budget and zero regard for the lives of said pilots. As a result, they're spindly little rustbuckets that trade all but the most minimal armour for speed and agility. Spearhead is made up of pilots who not only survived but thrived in Juggernauts, and so they stuck to Fragile Speedster machines even after joining up with the much more prosperous, advanced, and ethical Federacy of Giad. Reginleifs, their new rides, are best summarised as 'Juggernauts but actually good' - they're still very lightly-armoured, but they're better-armed, more reliable, and even better at getting out of the way when something wants to kill them (or better yet, getting the drop on something that hasn't even noticed them).
• Good Costume Switch: They're the heroes of the story all the way through, but this still applies when they go from being slave-soldiers of the monstrous Republic of San Magnolia in dull khaki Juggernauts to being elite pilots for the flawed but generally benevolent Federacy of Giad in gleaming white Reginleifs.
• Light Is Good: Their bright white Reginleifs signify their status as humanity's most elite defenders.
• Shipper on Deck: The entire squad with the exception of Kurena wants to see Shin and Lena together in later volumes and even make many different scenarios so they can confess to each other already. And even Kurena eventually comes around to them by Volume 9, going so far as to encourage Lena to ask Shin out on a real romantic date.
• The Squad: The current surviving members each fill a role.
  • Shin is The Leader, albeit of a headstrong variety seeing as he often rushes ahead and the main reason he's in charge is in part because of Might Makes Right, though he's also rather levelheaded, making reasonable but sometimes ruthless decisions in a fight.
  • While Lena isn't exactly considered an official member, she's technically The Smart Girl on account of the fact that, as their Handler, her role is to guide them in battle and supply strategies and support. Certainly helps that, unlike their previous Handlers, she actually takes her job seriously.
  • Raiden is The Lancer, being Shin's second-in-command, and The Big Guy, specializing in providing close-range support.
  • Theo is The Sneaky Guy, specializing in using wire traps to hinder enemy Legions.
  • Anju is the Demolitions Expert, with her Feldreß being designed to fire missiles with wide-area bombardment in mind.
  • Kurena is the Friendly Sniper, being their long-ranged specialist and top markswoman.
• True Companions: It's hard to deny Shin's group is made of people that are as close as family.
• Undying Loyalty: As they are now soldiers allied with the Federal Republic of Giad, they are ostensibly obligated to obey the orders of the top brass. But their loyalties lay with Lena, Queen of the Eighty-Six.
• Urban Warfare: The Eighty-Sixers specialize and are most effective fighting in urban environments where they can fully utilize the high-mobility of their Juggarnaughts.
• Uriah Gambit: When under the control of San Magnolia, the squadron was essentially this, being where the Republic transferred the more troublesome Eighty-Six who they feared could lead an uprising, in an attempt to wipe them out before that can happen.
• Your Days Are Numbered: As soon as they start fighting in the 86th District, they are fully aware they won't survive the months of service. However, they survive and end up in the Federacy.

Raiden Shuga

Werewolf

Voiced by: Seiichirō Yamashita (Japanese), Jonah Scott (English), Luis Navarro (Latin American Spanish)

Shin's 2nd in command who he met early in their "career" and who helped Shin cope with his ability to hear the Legion. Specializes in providing close-range fire support.

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• Because You Were Nice to Me: For a time he was sheltered from deportation by an elderly Alba woman. As result he's willing to fight the Legion in order to protect people like her, even if that also means defending the very same people who forced him onto the frontlines.
• Brutal Honesty: While he does (somewhat) apologize to Lena for Theo's harsh words after Kaie's death, he does suggest that she de-synchronize since it's not likely anyone's in the mood to talk to her. He does this again later on when Lena calls to apologize for not asking their real names up to that point, with him more directly apologizing for Theo's behavior, but also stating that as long as she'd hiding behind the walls they won't see her as an equal, and suggests that she should quit being a Handler.
• Curtains Match the Windows: He's got dark green hair and eyes.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He didn't get along very well with Shin when they first met, but their time on the battlefield together led to a deep friendship between the two.
• The Lancer: He's not a bad leader, but he knows he can't compete in skill with either Shin or Theo, so he prefers to support them.
• The McCoy: He's more open with his emotions, known by the teasing nickname of "Mom" among the Spearhead squadron because of how he pushes them to take care of themselves. This is in stark contrast to Shin who is completely willing to sacrifice himself so that the others can survive. Fittingly, Raiden berates him for it.
• More Dakka: His Reginleif swaps out its main gun for a 40mm autocannon, letting it chew through swarms of Legion mecha at close-to-medium range. Fittingly for the Number Two of Spearhead/Nordlicht, it lets him keep up with Shin and cover his back when he's rampaging through enemy lines.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being portrayed as Shin's equally battle-hardened second-in-command, he has shown to be just as candid at times. Notable examples were: when he was Corpsing towards Shin as Grethe replayed the voice clip from the latter's encounter with Lena after the Morpho mission; and the time when he struggled to keep a straight face at Shin and Lena's fateful face-to-face.
• Scars Are Forever: Has a scar across his left cheek and another over his right eye.
• Secret-Keeper: Raiden is the only person who knows the origin of Shin's iconic scar, which goes to show just how deeply the two trust one another.
• Team Mom: Has this role in the group, much to his embarrassment.
  Raiden: You should probably do some laundry, too. Wouldn't want your clothes to be all dirty and wrinkled when it's go time, right?
  Shin: Okay, Mom...
  Raiden: Fuck off.

Theoto "Theo" Rikka

Laughing Fox

Voiced by: Natsumi Fujiwara (Japanese), Casey Mongillo (English), Ángel Rodríguez (Latin American Spanish)

The team's painting enthusiast and cynic, Theo specializes in high-speed combat using wires.

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• An Arm and a Leg: He loses his left hand in Volume 8.
• Brutal Honesty: He doesn't mince his words nor his humor.
• Career-Ending Injury: After losing his arm he is forced to step down as a soldier.
• Close-Range Combatant: He's Spearhead's other close range specialist, though unlike Shin he relies on the Juggernaut's standard machine gun loadout when fighting enemies up close.
• Code Name: His call sign is Laughing Fox.
• Covert Pervert: While rarely shown there are moments where Theo acts like this.
  Theo: So it was a string bikini, huh?
  Shin: Shut. Up.
  Theo: Lena’s pretty bold, too.
  Shin: Who cares?
  Theo: …Were they big?
• The Cynic: Has the least positive outlook of all the members of the Spearhead Squadron.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: While other Eighty-sixes have this Theo's is given focus in Volume 8 because he is starting to get desperate, in part because he is jealous that Shin already found a reason.
  • His struggle is only exacerbated in volume 9 as he copes with the loss of his hand, and he has even more trouble envisioning a future for himself. In the end, he gets his answer from Annette of all people.
• Hidden Depths: He's a very good artist who painted the personal marks of his squadmates and later made one for Lena.
• Hypocrisy Nod: He almost immediately regrets his "Reason You Suck" Speech to Lena, not because he hurt her feelings, or so he claims, but because he recognizes that using Kaie's death as an excuse to lash out makes him no better than the Albans of San Mangolia, who take advantage of their deaths to achieve their goals on a daily basis.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A double case of this after Kaie's death and his "Reason You Suck" Speech towards Lena. At first, he's upset at himself for using Kaie's death as an excuse to lash out at Lena, which he thinks makes him no better than the "white pigs". After that, he struggles with an internal conflict of whether not the Fox Commander, his old commander whose call sign he took up, would have done the same thing he did in his shoes. He initially tries to convince himself that Fox Commander would have done the same, until Shin bluntly states that he wouldn't have, and Theo admits that he at least regrets how he worded his rant.
• Shipper on Deck: Going by the Anime, Theo may be one of the earliest to actually ship Shin with Lena, if the third sketch of her which he showed to Fido during the Episode 23 epilogue is anything to go by.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a furious one towards Lena after she tries to apologize for being unable to prevent Kaie's death, claiming she's just a Hypocritical Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who can't even bothered to learn their real names. While extremely harsh and cynical, the latter point is true and while Lena's certainly sympathetic to their plight, he's not wrong that she doesn't truly understand the scope of the Eighty-Sixes struggles.
• The Unapologetic: Despite regretting using Kaie's death as an excuse to rant on Lena, he still refuses to say he's sorry.

• You Are a Credit to Your Race: His previous commander, an Alba who decided to fight alongside the Eighty-Sixes instead of hiding behind the walls, was someone Theo highly respected, going as far as to take up his call-sign of Laughing Fox after he dies trying to protect his fellow Processors. Despite this, or perhaps even because of this, he has a clear dislike for other Albas, as shown by him drawing insulting pictures of each of Spearhead Squadron's Handlers to hang up and being among the most hostile to Lena.

Anju Emma

Snow Witch

Voiced by: Saori Hayami (Japanese), Maureen Price (English), Romina Marroquín Payró (Latin American Spanish)

Part-Alban member of the Squadron. Graceful outside of combat yet ruthless inside it, she specializes in area bombardment with missiles.

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• A-Cup Angst: Downplayed; her chest isn't exactly small, but Volume 7 shows she isn't happy that other girls like Kurena are bigger.
• Code Name: Snow Witch.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Blue hair and blue eyes. This is due to being part Alba, although not enough to not being considered a Colorata.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Anju could almost pass for a pure blooded Alba, but her mixed ancestry led to her being classified as an Eighty-Six. This unfortunately didn't stop her from being subjected to abuse at the hands of other Eighty-Six in the camps due her Alba appearance.
• Long-Range Fighter: After upgrading to a Reginleif, she becomes part of the squad's fire support alongside Kurena. Her missile launchers are the only primary weapons in Spearhead/Nordlicht that are completely useless in a close-quarters firefight, but that's a reasonable price to pay when they let her erase entire platoons of Grauwolfs and Ameise from beyond visual range.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Her Reginleif's primary armament is a pair of multiple-missile launchers loaded with cluster munitions, letting her blanket entire Legion formations in explosions and sow chaos and confusion for Soearhead/Nordlicht's close-quarters specialists to exploit.
• Scars Are Forever: The result of her undeniable resemblance to other Alba caused other Eighty-Sixers to abuse her, even going as far as to carve the words "Whore's Daughter" onto her back. By Volume 7, she's started seeing an expert to have the scar removed.
• Ship Tease: After Daiya is killed, she convinces herself that she won't fall in love with anyone else ever again. However, it seems this changed somewhat after a pep talk from Dustin. Afterwards, she says she can't return his feelings yet, but asks Dustin to not die and leave her behind as well. And by the time of Volume 9 she calls those words a lie, saying she wouldn't have accepted to dance or asked him to not die if she didn't have romantic feelings for the Alban boy, this allowed her to give the first steps to make official their relationship.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Most of the time she's kind, cool-headed and friendly, but she suffered quite a great deal not only from Albas, but by other Colorata who saw her as no different from an Alba.
  • After Daiya is killed, while she manages to keep a cool face, it's clear she's very much pained at his death.
• Tranquil Fury: After Shin finally reunites with the group after they have been rescued by the Federacy, Anju more or less threatens to beat Shin up for trying to make a suicidal last stand without the groups' input, all with a smile on her face..

Kurena Kukumila

Gunslinger

Voiced by: Sayumi Suzushiro (Japanese), Erica Mendez (English), Amanda Hinojosa (Latin American Spanish)

The team's sniping specialist who harbors feelings for Shin, at least initially.

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• Action Fashionista: When she's off the battlefield, the anime shows she's interested in fashion and clothing and that she spends most of her free time in department stores in Giad. In the final episode, she gets a fancy purse for her Holy Festival gift, and later buys a duffle coat and pair of leather boots and happily skips home in her new outfit.
• Alliterative Name: Kurena Kukumila.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Late in Volume 9, she finally tells Shin straight out that she's in love with him. This is mainly for her benefit in getting these feelings off her chest, as she already knows full well he's deeply in love with Lena. She's also accepted that she never had a chance with him in the first place regardless, even if Lena had never come into the picture, so she tells him she hopes he and Lena will be happy together. For his part, Shin can only look away and give her a terse apology.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She's the youngest member of Spearhead, being a year younger than the others, and they all treat her like the little sister they never had.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the Dragon Fang Mountain battle, as a Dinosauria is about to blast Lena at point-blank range with its 155mm cannon, Kurena destroys the monster with a pair of well-aimed shots that hit its turret and disables its central processor. She then tells Lena that Shin had told her to look out for her, and that she'd never be able to face him again if Lena had died on her watch.
• BFG: The cannons on San Magnolian Juggernauts and Giadian Reginleifs are disproportionately large to begin with, but as the squad sniper, Kurena uses ones with enlarged barrels for long-ranged accuracy. They're absolutely colossal - roughly twice the length of the Spider Tanks they're mounted on.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She has the largest bust among the squadron, to the envy of Anju.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In part due to her Fantastic Racism, she really hates Lena for contacting Shin so often and attempting to be friendly with them, wanting Shin to hurry up and "break" her like the previous Handlers. Daiya actually chides her for this, saying that Shin didn't intend to "break" their previous Handlers and that it's not something you should just ask him to do.
• Code Name: Gunslinger.
• Cruel to Be Kind: While she starts off prickly to Lena due to her history with Albas and how close she gets to Shin, she does grow to care for her in a way, to the point where she vouches for telling her about how all of Spearhead Squadron are expected to all be wiped out before they actually get "reinforcements", so that she'll think to cut ties with them to spare herself the pain.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Red hair and red eyes.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Shin "broke" the team's previous Handler because he was a Jerkass who hated Eighty-Six and intentionally gave them strategies to kill as many of them as he could. In comparison, while she's convincing herself that Lena is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing due to her being an Alba, she all but states to Daiya that she wants Shin to do the same Lena just for getting close to Shin and for her attempts to be friendly and minimise their casualties. Daiya actually calls her out on this.
• Dude Magnet: In Volume 9 she gets confessed to by five different Processors after confessing to Shin and being rejected.
• Friendly Sniper: At least towards her squadron, she's friendly, but rather cold towards Lena.
• Hidden Buxom: She's actually pretty stacked despite being rather petite, but it isn't very noticeable due to her clothes. The official illustrator for the series shows us the truth.
• Insane Troll Logic: A scene in the anime's final episode has her desperately ranting to Fido that Lena and Shin can't possibly have romantic feelings for each other because Lena's known Shin for a shorter time than Kurena has, and thus this obviously means Lena must be the real little sister figure to Shin. Unfortunately for Kurena, feelings don't work that way.
• Kiddie Kid: A downplayed example. Kurena has a tendency to act childish when she's feeling relaxed, and in one scene other members of Spearhead wonder aloud why she never matured. In her more somber moments and on the battlefield, however, she displays mental and emotional intelligence more in line with the rest of the cast. In a way, Kurena could be considered an inversion of this trope: the way she acts in her happier moments is exactly the way a girl of her age should behave, and it's more that the members of Spearhead Squadron were forced to grow up way too fast.
• Like Brother and Sister: Kurena is in love with Shin, however by Volume 3 the rest of the squadron told her that Shin's feelings for her are this trope, so her love is unrequited.
• Long-Range Fighter: She's the team sniper, so this goes with the territory. While she's theoretically capable of holding her own up close, her machine's agility and the rest of her squad's skill in keeping the enemy otherwise occupied means that there's basically never any reason for her to do so.
• My Greatest Failure: In Volume 9, she's haunted by the fact that she froze up on the Mirage Spire when battling the Noctiluca and failed to provide cover fire, which resulted in the death of Shana and other Processors.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Implied. When she and Anju are bathing after finding a boiler in an abandoned town, she questions why the whole squad didn't just bathe together since it would have been quicker.
• Toxic Friend Influence: She is the one member of the team who emphatically does not want Shin to change who he is at all, and wishes that they remain the same drifting souls that they were in the Eighty-Sixth district in spite of how devastating this would be to Shin's mental health and his relationship with Lena. It isn't until she is confronted with Hilnå's madness in Volume 9 and sees how similar her nihilistic worldview is to her own that Kurena gets a metaphorical slap in the face and runs away from this attitude fast.
• Tragic Bigot: While almost all of the Spearhead squad hate the Albas to a degree for forcing them to fight for them, she in particular dislikes them because her parents were killed by Albas. Combine this with her feelings for Shin, and it's easy to see why she starts out hating Lena.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: While the group's washing and drying their clothes and wearing rags they found as substitutes, Kurena's shown chasing a butterfly through a flower field, her rags coming off when she jumps up to try and catch it.

Commanding officers and aides

Frederica Rosenfort/Augusta Frederica Adel-Adler

Voiced by: Misaki Kuno (Japanese), Kimberley Anne Campbell (English), Natalia Crespo (Latin American Spanish)

The last Empress of Empire of Giad who's adopted by Ernst Zimmermann for her safety. She initially joined Nordlicht Squadron as a mascot after Shin and the group choose to return to the battlefield. After, she becomes Lena's aide, using her ability as a seer to help monitor troops.

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• Antiquated Linguistics: Zigzagged. When she's being serious, she starts talking using advanced vocabulary and philosophical ideals in an extremely formal stilted manner, which is especially apparent in Japanese. On the other hand, when she's just being her age, she talks like any other bratty 10-year old kid would.
• Brutal Honesty: When Kurena goes through one of her indecisive bouts of whether or not she should confess her feelings to Shin, she asks the others if they think she has a shot. While Anju and Theo are hesitating and trying to figure out how to break the news to her tactfully, Frederica just bluntly tells her she doesn't and that Shin only sees her as a little sister.
  • Happens again in Volume 4 when Annette tries to apologize to Shin for her calling him a racial slur and abandoning him when they were children, only to realize he doesn't remember the incident at all. Frederica harshly tells her that she would have been better off never bringing up the subject with him.
• Children Are Innocent: As Empress she was little more than a puppet for the militarist regime of the old empire.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the anime she is seen briefly in the flash of Kiri's memories Shin glimpses after he gets targeted by the Morpho's railgun.
• Full-Name Basis: She is the only character who consistently addresses Shin by his full first name, Shinei. He figures in Volume 8 that she does this consistently to avoid associating him in her head with her former knight Kiriya, who she always called Kiri.
• Idiot Hair: Has a cowlick on top of her head.
• Living Macguffin: Her status as the last surviving member of the Giadian royal family means that theoretically she's the only person left with the authority to shut down the Legion.
• Morality Pet: She was basically the only thing keeping Kiri sane, which is why her disappearance caused his Despair Event Horizon. She later attaches herself to Shin in order to prevent him from going down a similar path.
• Seers: Frederica has the ability to see into the past and the present of a person, as long as she knows their name. This even works on humans assimilated by the Legion.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Despite not actually being royalty anymore (the Empire no longer exists and she has no desire to see it reborn), she feels responsible for the Legion War and will eagerly put herself at risk (or sacrifice herself altogether) to stop it. At one point, she sneaks aboard Fido when the Strike Package launches on its near-suicidal mission to fly deep behind Legion lines to take out the Morpho, and refuses to hide or go back because she not only has a deeply personal stake in the mission, but also because she can actually help with her unique ability. She then makes a decisive difference in Shin's battle with the Morpho by running out into battle and shooting Shin's handgun into the air to get Kiriya's attention. She then ups the ante by pointing the gun **at her own head** to distract Kiriya further.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Frederica, despite being only 10, due to her upbringing as the future Empress and her powers as a seer allow her to be way more mature psychologically than her age is. In fact, she ends up as a sort-of therapist to Shin's group even if she has her own issues.

Henrietta "Annette" Penrose

Voiced by: Riho Sugiyama (Japanese), Morgan Garrett (English), Alessia Becerril (Latin American Spanish)

The head of Republic's Para-RAID research after her father's suicide. She's also Lena's friend and Shin's childhood friend. Eventually ends up as R&D head within the Strike Package.

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• Child Prodigy: The same age as Lena and heads the Para-RAID research ever since her father's death, and she has done a pretty good job.
• Curtains Match the Window: Silver hair and eyes.
• Damsel in Distress: In Volume 4, while investigating a Para-RAID signal anomaly her escort unit Phalanx Squadron is destroyed and she is cut off from the rest of the task force. She ends up in the bowels of a Weisel factory and has a close call with a Self-Propelled Mine chasing her until Shin and Raiden arrive to save her.
• Freudian Excuse: The reason for her Safety in Indifference attitude is because she blames herself for her Childhood Friend, Shin, potentially getting sent to a camp and dying because she was too afraid to support her father wanting to take them in and hide them.
• Grade Skipper: Like Lena, she's mentioned to have skipped a few grades in school.
• Ironic Echo: In Volume 7, after she's had enough of listening to Lena's absurd and illogical excuses to not be with Shin, she pointedly reminds her that if she wastes any more time around Shin, the roosters will start to crow, echoing the very same words Lena had told her to persuade her to not abandon Shin again.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Almost always seen wearing one. It even saves her life in Volume 4 when she throws her labcoat over a Self-Propelled Mine's head, which blinds it and causes it to stumble around due to having both poor sensors and not enough precision dexterity with its hands to pull it off.
• Lethal Chef: According to Shin she liked to make sweets as a child despite being terrible at it, like melting chocolate and somehow turning it purple. Shin thinks it's part of the reason why he dislikes sweets in the present. She's gotten much better at cooking since then.
• My Greatest Failure: She believes that she could have convinced her father to hide Shin's family, but refused due to being angry with Shin at the time. As a result she blames herself for her childhood friend being sent to the interment camps.
• My Greatest Second Chance: When Lena approaches her to get access to the mortars and the ability to sync sight, Annette coldly refuses... until Lena mentions that Shin, her Childhood Friend who she left to get deported, is the Leader of Spearhead Squadron, giving her a chance to save him. It's evident that Lena's going for this, as she coldly asks Annette if she's going to abandon Shin again.
• Only Friend: She's probably the only true friend Lena has and the only person she confides in.
• Riches to Rags: Like Lena she loses everything when the Republic is destroyed.
• Safety in Indifference: How she rationalized the treatment of the Eighty-Six, having lost contact with Shin since their childhood after she let him and his family get deported. She often tries to encourage Lena to take up the same stance, but Lena doesn't bite.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Though she doesn't seem to need them outside of work.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She accuses Lena of simply prolonging the Spearhead Squadron's suffering by insisting on trying to save them, claiming not doing anything and letting them die would have been a Mercy Kill.
  • In Volume 7, she verbally rips Lena a new one when the latter keeps making lame excuses not to return Shin's feelings, angrily reminding her that she promised not to leave him behind and that if she runs away from him now, it would be the same as breaking that promise.
• Workaholic: She tends to focus on her research to barely sleep at night.

Grethe Wenzel

Voiced by: Kana Ueda (Japanese), Vanessa Olea (Latin American Spanish)

The overall commander of the Strike Package, Grethe is also the head developer of the Reginleif and a skilled aircraft pilot prior to the fleet grounding.

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• Arms Dealer: She's derisively called this by fellow soldiers who aren't fond of her, due to being the heir to a family-owned business that is heavily involved in the Federation's weapons manufacturing industry.
• Benevolent Boss: She is this for Shin and the other members of the Strike Package. Even before they were fully used to the Federacy, Grethe was one of the adults that didn't want them to risk their lives or die while in battle, and was constantly worried about their well-being. Deconstructed in that her reluctance to have them fight frankly pisses them off, with Shin even giving her a "Reason You Suck" Speech when she tries ordering him to not take part in the mission to destroy the Morpho and retire from the military, saying that saving them doesn't give Giad the right to pity them and force them to live lives they're not accusstomed to. To her credit, she immediately takes this to heart and respects their decisions completely from then on.
• Boyish Short Hair: Keeps her hair short and rather masculine.
• Colonel Badass: A Lieutenant Colonel and the head developer of the Reginleif, and is one of the few remaining aircraft pilots left in active service in the Federation, which she proves by being the only one skilled/crazy enough to pilot the Nachzehrer into Legion airspace.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When the Nachzehrer is shot down Grethe is left alone behind enemy lines with only a single Reginleif to defend against the horde of Legion no doubt coming to investigate the crash site. Yet when we next see her she's somehow managed to link up with the Federacy advance force. The sorry state of her Reginleif implies that she fought her way back to Federacy lines singlehandely.
• Red Baron: Not used as much as the titles of other characters, but in volume 3 we learn that she has the nickname of Legion-slaying Black Widow. It's implied she lost her fiancé to the Legion right before she was going to marry him.
• Shipper on Deck: Is probably the biggest supporter of Shin and Lena's budding relationship outside of Spearhead themselves. Despite all her teasing, she is known to be very understanding of their situation as young officers struggling to balance a professional relationship and a personal one (likely because she herself was also in that same situation several years earlier when she was engaged to a fellow officer) and gives them both sympathy and sound advice whenever they have a falling out. In volume 8, she calls and questions Lena about a report the latter apparently forgot to make. Turns out, the "report" was just Grethe wanting to know if/how Lena responded to Shin's Love Confession in the previous volume. Lena is understandably floored by her directness.
• Tragic Keepsake: The engagement ring and name tag of her fiancée, which she still wears around her neck.

Erwin Marcel

Voiced by: Kengo Takanashi (Japanese), Kiba Walker (English), Carlos Mireles (Latin American Spanish)

Eugene's friend, he was forced to retire from a combat role after the large-scale Legion offensive caused a permanent leg injury to him. He has since become a tactical aide.

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• Jerkass: Totally willing to emotionally manipulate a child to spite the misplaced target of his ire. He later admits what he did to Shin and apologizes for it.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He blames Shin for his injury and Eugene's death manipulates Eugene's sister into sending Shin a letter that triggers his survivor's guilt and nearly causes him to die in battle. Seeing as Shin's ability to sense the Legion is key to standing a chance against them, he nearly doomed humanity out of spite. He later apologizes to Shin and admits that he had been acting the same way the Republic had (taking the anger of his loss out on a convenient scapegoat rather than accepting the harsh reality of the situation), which he is ashamed of.
  • Later inverted as Erwin saves Lena's life by quickly smashing a special Legion electronic warfare mini-drone that had snuck into the command post and was about to send a flash of lethal radiation at Lena's face at point-blank range. Given how it failed even in the one rare occasion where the opportunity arose to use it, the tactic is never tried again by the Legion.

Isabella Perschmann

Lena's adjuntant in the Strike Package.

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• Blatant Lies: She wakes up Lena every day so the mischevious Eighty-Six won't see her sleepy face and end up undermining the coronel's diginity, not because of the adjuntant's possessiveness that made her want to protect the beautiful young girl's unguarded appearance. Absolutely not.
• Embarrassing Nickname: She considers herhighschool nickname, Ms. Minchin, this.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: She has five younger siblings.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Ties her hair in a tight bun, fiting her very serious personality.

Other members

Shiden Iida

Cyclops

Voiced by: Asuna Tomari (Japanese), Rebeka Thomas (English), Betzabé Jara (Latin American Spanish)

Captain of Queen's Knights, Lena's unit after Spearhead Squadron. She currently serves as Captain of Brisingamen Squadron within the Strike Package and Lena's personal bodyguard.

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• Amazon Brigade: Brísingamen Squadron is composed of only women.
• Everyone Can See It: Amongst the Eighty-Sixers and Frederica at least. To them it seemed rather obvious that Shiden had feelings for Lena.
• Code Name: Her call sign is Cyclops due to her pale left eye.
• Fiery Redhead: Has red hair and a very excitable personality, always ready to fight.
• Fire-Forged Friends: In the beginning she and Shana didn't get along and were constantly bickering, by the time of the story they have a deep bond of camaderie.
• Hopeless Suitor: She has feelings for Lena, who would never reciprocate them. Implied to be at least part of the reason why she and Shin don't get along.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Held feelings for Lena, her direct superior. Sadly they were never reciprocated, much less recognized by Lena.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In Volume 9 she makes sure to tell Shin and the others she is the one that will destroy the Shana Shepherd.
• Shipper on Deck: Conspires with the rest of her comrades to ensure that Shin and Lena get together despite also having feelings for her.

Shana Aya

Melusine

Shiden's vice-captain of the Queen's Knights and Brisingamen squadron.

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• Girly Bruiser: While on leave in the Alliance, one of the souvenirs she buys is some nice nail polish, and she even offers to do Rito's nails for him.
• Killed Off for Real: Is killed during the assault on the Mirage Spire in volume 8, sacrificing herself to snipe one of the Noctiluca's railguns and temporarily knock it out of action.
• The Lancer: She is this to Shiden.
• Only One Name: Her full name is never mentioned in the light novel, even after she dies. It took the anime's final episode to print her last name in a personnel report.
• Token Minority: Like Niko Kujou, she's one of the few dark-skinned characters in the series.

Rito Oriya

Milan

A Processor attached to Aldrecht's unit after Spearhead Squadron's departure from San Magnolia.

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• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Rito has the tendency to speak without thinking which tends to annoys others, either for saying things in a tactless way or not being able to keep secrets.
• Remember the New Guy?: He previously served in a squadron with Shin and Raiden two years prior to the Charité operation, so the three of them are well-acquainted with each other, but was introduced to the readers for the first time in Volume 4.

Dustin Jaeger

Sagittarius

Initially an unnamed student who gave a speech condemning the treatment of the Eighty-Six back in Volume 1, Dustin is the only San Magnolian Alba to voluntarily join the Strike Package after the Federacy came to rescue them.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: He's an Alba who was born in the Empire and attended a school in a new town for first-generation immigrants, meaning his family were the only ones spared when the rest were moved to internment camps and he was literally the last student left behind.
  • The same applies with other Eighty-Sixers as the reason he wasn't affected by the Siege Route. This is because he didn't go through the same thing as the Eighty-Sixers, so he didn't have the mindset that they did or the same pride binding them to keep fighting. It makes him a lot more isolated from them as a result.
• Brutal Honesty: Anju was surprised how easily Dustin admited he wanted to see her in a bikini.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Although only a rookie combatant, Dustin is largely unfazed by the death and destruction that surrounds him after surviving the Legion large-scale offensive.
  "It's not like I haven't seen mountains of corpses before, like during the large-scale offensive."
• Defector from Decadence: One of the few Albas vocally opposed to their racial policies, which leads to him joining the Strike Package to serve alongside the Eighty-Six.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He makes an unnamed appearance at the end of volume 1 where he gives a speech denouncing the Republic's treatment of the Eighty-Six. In the anime, he makes an unvoiced appearance in the final episode.
• Ensign Newbie: Unlike the rest of the Strike Package's pilots, who are either veteran Eighty-Six or Federacy soldiers, Dustin has no prior military experience which makes him further stand out in the squadron.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: He gets to be on the receiving end of this in Volume 5. After Shin overhears him confessing his feelings to Anju, he tosses a bag of clothes at him full force and tells that was Daiya's, and that if he ever makes Anju cry, he'll be thrown to the Legion.
• Moment Killer: In volume 7 he accidentaly walks in Shin and Lena's private moment that the others set up so the two could finally confess their feelings.

Brent Bernholdt

Voiced by: Itaru Yamamoto (Japanese), Dafnis Fernández (Latin American Spanish)

• Alliterative Name: Brent Bernholdt.
• Gentle Giant: Pretty tall and broadsided but a nice person nonetheless.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a scar across the bridge of his nose.

Yuuto Crow

Captain of the 1st Armored Division's Thunderbolt Squadron.

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• Ambiguously Brown: He has dark skin but there's no mention of him having Deseria or Meridiana blood.
• Code Name: Verethragna.
• The Stoic: He rarely changes his expression, even when talking about which breast size he likes.

Reki Michihi

Hualien

Captain of the 1st Armored Division's Lycaon Squadron.

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• A Day in the Limelight: Despite being introduced in Volume 4, she was largely relegated to only a few pages per volume as passing mentions for the longest time. This is especially noticeable in Volumes 5 & 6 where the narrative hardly mentions her despite being set in a snowy country with her being a cold-weather combat specialist. In Volume 8, she is benched for the Mirage Spire mission since she was assigned to remain on land instead of participating in the naval assault, much to her dissatisfaction. Volume 9 finally gives her some deserved attention when she pulls her weight fighting the Halcyon.
• Girly Bruiser: She's cute as a button and takes care of her physical appearance. In Volume 7, she buys a small batch of lipstick to prepare for the ball on their last day of leave.
• The Quiet One: She's no particularly talkative, though still has no issue joining conversations or voicing her opinion.

Fido

An AI developed by Shin's father, Fido was Shin's loyal pet robot dog until Shin was taken away. He uploaded himself online and then into a Scavenger unit, supporting many Eighty-Six until he was left to wander the battlefield alone to try and find his owner, which he eventually did. He is the protagonist of a side-story which details his past from his perspective.

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• Back from the Dead: His original body gets destroyed at some point during Spearhead's suicide mission. However, enough of his CPU survived for his programming to later be downloaded into a new unit.
• Benevolent A.I.: It's an AI that helps the humans of Spearhead.
• Big Damn Heroes: Fido saved Shin's life during the battle for the Dragon Fang Mountain by straight up tackling the Merciless Queen. Which is rather impressive considering that Fido is supposed to be a non combat support mech.
• Fake Video Camera View: The flashback snippets in episode 10, prior to Spearhead Squadron's Suicide Mission, was through its camera lens. Those get interspersed later on with the recordings in the Episode 23 epilogue, prior to their long-awaited reunion with Lena.
• The Confidant: Was one to Kurena, with her often going to him to gush whenever something happens between her and Shin, and later asking if there's anything she can really do for him.
• Team Pet: Alongside TP the cat it serves as a sort of pet for Spearhead, since it acts more like a dog than a machine. It even waves at TP with one of its legs when it's about to accompany Spearhead in their final mission.
• The Unintelligible: Fido can only communicate by saying "pi", yet Shin understands him perfectly.

TP

Originally an unnamed black cat adopted by the Spearhead Squadron, after they were sent to their final mission the cat was adopted by Lena who named him Thermopylae.

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• Cute Kitten: Spearhead certainly thought so, and Anju even called him Kitty.
• I Have Many Names: Until Lena officially named him, everyone at the squad called him however they wanted. Ironically, he also has several names depending on translation: the official light novel release calls him TP, the fan translation called him Tippy, and the anime spells his name as Teppy on his food bowl.
• Meaningful Name: His full name, Thermopylae, is a reference to the Battle of Thermopylae, in which the small army of 7,000 Greeks fought to the death against the much, much larger Persian forces. When Shin wonders why Lena didn't call him Leonidas instead (after the king who actually led the Greeks into battle), she replies that since TP didn't die an honorable death like Leonidas did, the name wouldn't be as meaningful.
• Team Pet: A more conventional pet than Fido adopted by the Squadron.

The Priest

Formerly a soldier of the Republic until retiring a becoming a religious man, he took care of Shourei and Shinei after their parents were sent to battle, teaching the latter how to write and read. He was later assigned as a military chaplain for the Strike Package.

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• Bear Hug: He is properly introduced giving one to Shin.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He is just known as Priest or Reverend.
• Heroic Build: He is very tall and muscular due his past as a soldier. He is even described as someone who could deal with an Ameise using a shovel.
• Nice Guy: He treated the Eighty-Six as humans after they were sent to the concentration camp, even keeping his church open to help those who wished for help, and it didn't bother him if they hated him for being an Alba.
• Parental Substitute: Served as this for Shin after the death of his family, teaching the boy how to read, write and various survival tips. Also how to kill with a shovel.
• Shipper on Deck: He is aware of Lena's positive influence on Shin and hopes she can keep supporting him.

Other Giadian military personnel

Ernst Zimmermann

Voiced by: Yūya Uchida (Japanese), Keith Silverstein (English), Julio Bernal (Latin American Spanish)

The Federacy's current temporary president, Frederica and the Spearhead Squadron's adoptive parent, and the Federacy military's supreme commander.

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• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: He is not their biological parent, but he acts like this for the Spearhead Squadron and Frederica sometimes.
• Good Parents: He has legally adopted all five members of Spearhead to give them a home and legal residency in Giad, and does his best to look out for their best interests. He's also this to Frederica as well. It comes as no surprise that he once had a biological child.
• Mythical Motifs: He is constantly compared to a fire-breathing dragon.
• Principles Zealot: It's easy to forget, but this man was one of the chief architects of an extremely violent revolution that executed a royal family and dismantled an entire noble power structure that had been in place for centuries. As such, power means little to him other than serving as a means to ensure that his ideals are achieved, and he has absolutely no qualms about dooming all of mankind to die to the Legion if he ever feels that the moral values he fought for are abandoned by his nation. In Volume 8's prologue, Shin finally recognizes just how dangerous of a man Ernst really is when it comes to debating whether Frederica may have to be sacrificed to save humanity from the Legion.
• Regent for Life: A downplayed example. He serves as temporary president of Giad until the country is able to hold formal elections. However, it has been over 10 years since the Legion War started, and with Giad still transitioning from an empire into a federation, the political situation is tenuous, so his presidency has lasted for over a decade and counting.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: His friendliness towards the Spearhead survivors and enthusiasm for extolling the virtues of the Federacy of Giad initially comes across as rather forced and sinister, but it soon turns out that there's no dark secret behind it - he's just a self-aware idealist who's deeply frustrated by the Crapsack World he finds himself in. When he presents himself and his country as trustworthy and reliable allies, he really does mean it.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: The care and treatment of children is extremely Serious Business for him, to the point that he would rather see all humans die to the Legion rather than sacrifice Spearhead or Frederica to stop them.

Willem Ehrenfried

Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu (Japanese), Carlos Hernández (Latin American Spanish)

Willem Ehrenfried is the Chief of Staff responsible for the Federal Republic of Giad's Western Front, as well as an old friend of Grethe Wenzel.

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• Everyone Has Standards: Despite saying that the Eighty-Six are like extremely sharp blades that are resolved to keep cutting until they break, he is disgusted by how the Republic deliberately sabotaged and executed its best soldiers rather than trying to support and make the most out of them. He also views the Eigthy-Six's choice to continue fighting as something to be respected and a key part of what makes them who they are.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While coldly pragmatic and implying that he views the Eighty-Six as weapons (albeit ones that should not be wasted or lost if it can be helped), he reveals his more sentimental and moral sides at several points throughout the story, showing that he really does care about the Eighty-Six as people beyond just their combat potential, but is very coy about showing it. Furthermore, one of the key reasons Willem cites for calling them weapons is that the Eighty-Six knowingly and clearly rejected a life of peace and safety so that they could dive back into the war and keep fighting to the end—in other words, that the Eighty-Six **choose** to be weapons of their own volition.

Richard Altner

Voiced by: Kanehira Yamamoto (Japanese), SungWon Cho (English), Roberto Mendiola (Latin American Spanish)

Major-General Richard Altner is the commander of the 177th Armored Division.

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• Curtains Match the Window: The black hair and eyes of an Onyx.
• Exact Words: When he offers his input to Ernst regarding the Spearhead Five when they were first recovered by the Federacy, he states that the safest thing for the Federation would be to quietly eliminate them. When Ernst brings up this moment later on, Altner states that he was stating the truth in that it would be the safest thing for the Federacy, not that he believed it was the right thing to do or the course of action that he would actually choose to take himself. Instead, he explained that it was his duty to point out the coldly pragmatic point of view so that Ernst could make the most informed decision possible.
• Eyepatch of Power: Has an eyepatch covering his right eye.
• Frontline General: In the anime he personally comes out to the frontline after the Morpho is destroyed to make contact with Lena and Shiden, the first foreign contact the Federacy has had since Spearhead made it to their borders. This is while a Legion swarm is approaching and a Federacy helicopter squadron is still suppressing their advance.

Eugene Rantz

Voiced by: Atsushi Tamaru (Japanese), Howard Wang (English), Miguel de León (Latin American Spanish)

A Giadian who befriends Shin during one of the latter's library trips. He became Shin's partner early in Shin's career in the Federacy army and kickstarted a lot of Shin's Character Development, despite only spending a rather short amount of time together before Shin was forced to euthanize him due to Eugene's injury in the field.

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• Curtains Match the Window: As a pure-blood Celena he had silver eyes and hair.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: He lost his lower half when his Vánagandr exploded, this forced Shin to Mercy Kill him.
• Nice Guy: He's pretty nice and friendly, treating Shin like any other person despite being a former Eighty-Six.
• Promotion to Parent: With their parents dead Eugene was the one to raise his younger sister.
• Riches to Rags: His family used to be wealthy but because it wasn't an important one they got demoted by the new goverment of the Federacy.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears in one volume but his friendship left a big impact in Shin.
• You Remind Me of X: Upon meeting Eugene, Shin is immediately reminded of Lena on account of Eugene's friendly and honest demeanor.
  • In fact, one of Asato's tweets states that Eugene was created specifically to evoke both Rei and Lena, two people who've arguably had the greatest impact on Shin's life thus far.

Myrmecoleo Free Armored Regiment

Svenja Brantolote

The regiment's mascot.

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• The Rival: Developes a rivalry with Frederica after their brief fight in Volume 9.

Civilians

Nina Rantz

Voiced by: Madoka Asahina (Japanese), Abby Espiritu (English), Bonnie Miuller (Latin American Spanish)

Eugene's little sister.

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Teresa

Voiced by: Yuna Yoshino (Japanese), Adriana Casas (Latin American Spanish)

Ernst's maid within his personal residence.

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• Identical Stranger: Apparently she is a dead ringer for Ernst Zimmerman's long dead love.
• Meido: Works as a maid and caretaker of Zimmermann's residence.

Seiei Nouzen

Shin's paternal grandfather and the head of the Nouzen clan.

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• Doting Grandparent: He wants to be this to Shin, but his grandson's emotional detachment prevents it. An example of this is in a Volume 7 side-story where Seiei gets nervous trying to decide a gift for Shin's birthday, but can't, because the marquis doesn't know what his grandson likes.
• My Greatest Failure: Seiei really regrets not keeping in touch with his eldest son more, which is why he tries to bond with Shin.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His eldest son died years ago, and the lack of mention of his other children implies they could also be dead.
• Retired Badass: Implied. It was stated that he once led half of the Empire's military.

Gelda Maika

Shin's maternal grandmother.

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• Psychic Link: Implied. As a Maika she should have this power, specially since her daughter and grandsons have it.

Republic of San Magnolia

In General

• A Million Is a Statistic: The Republic of San Magnolia had a population of over 10 million, and ten million Republic citizens were killed by the Legion during their months-long large scale offensive on the country. Their brains were then harvested to make more Shepherds and Black Sheep to boot. In other words, over 90% of the country's population is massacred. And yet, there is still a strong undercurrent of bigotry and racism against the Eighty-Six and they have refused to learn their lesson. An Alba supremacist faction known as the Holy Magnolian Order of Pureblood, Pure-White, Patriotic Knights (pejoratively called the "Bleachers" for their radical ideology) rapidly gains support and their leader increases her influence in the interim government after the slaughter.
• Believing Their Own Lies: The country's Fatal Flaw - they use transparently ridiculous propaganda to deflect from their government's bigotry and malice, and while most of it is clearly meant for public consumption rather than as something the people in charge seriously buy into, their cloud of disinformation has become so dense that it seriously hampers their ability to perceive reality and to function as a country.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: San Magnolia is culturally very similar to France and seems to have taken every negative stereotype about the French military to heart. These include a desire to avoid any kind of sacrifice, incompetent leadership, a useless line of fortifications built to give a false sense of security, and a complete loss of the will to fight once said fortified line was breached. The only thing stopping them from surrendering outright was the Legion's inability to accept such an offer.
• Culture Chop Suey: If you combine every negative stereotype about the French military (as seen above), the background of the Soviet Union - anti-monarchal revolution and the banning of religion, alongside a powerful privileged oligarchy pretending to be an enlightened nation - with the malice and racism of Nazi Germany - example being, ethnic cleansing being almost as important as winning the war - you get San Magnolia.
• Dirty Coward: Shin speculates that the reason the Handlers refer to Processors by call-signs is because the Republic is attempting to have the Handlers disassociate them with humans, so that that they wouldn't be too affected by their deaths. Lena outright states that this is cowardly.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Even before Giad invaded, they were a corrupt, racist oligarchy pretending to be a liberal democracy, and the war caused them to double down on their worst and most self-destructive traits until their inevitable demise. After their military proved inadequate to the task of defeating the Legion, they didn't start taking it seriously and band together as a nation to deal with an existential threat, but turned the war into an excuse for genocide-by-proxy while letting their privileged elite hide from reality within a bubble of propaganda.
• Future Food Is Artificial: Due to losing much of their farmland in the initial Legion invasion, the Republic relies on synthetic food to keep its population fed, making real food an incredibly rare delicacy.
• General Failure: See Fascist, but Inefficient and Too Dumb to Live. The Republic's toxic, self-destructive culture makes it completely incapable of properly running a war, with its few talented officers being viewed by their superiors as liabilities rather than assets. To make matters worse, the supposed operational time limit on the Legion means that most San Magnolians see the military as not-especially-important temp work with few long-term career prospects. In other words, it's a General Failure factory. It's implied that their military was behind the times even before the war, as they lacked a domestically produced Feldreß when the Legion first invaded. This was in spite of earlier conflicts demonstrating the superiority of multi legged walkers over more conventional armored vehicles. Unsurprisingly, their army paid dearly for this in the first days of the war and was almost totally wiped out. The only reason they survived was because the Legion only committed a bare minimum of its forces in subsequent fighting.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: Subverted. While they may have been justified initially fighting a defensive war against the expansionist Giad Empire, the Republic of San Magnolia's pre-existing prejudices and inequalities mean that once it was placed under pressure, it quickly degenerated into one of the most malicious countries in the setting, and in many respects ended up becoming much worse morally than Giad.
• Hate Sink: The Republic of San Magnolia is universally despised in-universe and out for its treatment of the Eighty-Six and their general ineptitude in regards to the war.
• He Knows Too Much: Another reason for their insistence on wiping out the Eighty-Six; now that they've forcibly conscripted them and lied to the people for years that they're automated drones, public opinion will drop if the truth got out now, meaning they need to wipe them out to prevent of this getting out.
• Hypocrite: As Lena points out, the San Magnolia flag represents freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice and nobility. Yet, the government opted to lie to the general public by telling them that they're fighting back with unmanned automated drones and winning, when in reality those "automated drones" are piloted by people whose citizenships they revoked for not being Albas, people with silver hair and eyes, and forced to fight for them. The closest they have to a defense against this accusation is that these concepts only apply to human beings and that the Eighty-Sixes aren't humans, when it's them who de-humanized them in the first place. Even before this, they banned religion due to its ties with the previous monarchy, yet their founder and namesake heroine is canonized as Saint Magnolia — to say nothing of how they killed said founder and heroine after she proved an impediment to the new government consolidating its power and wealth.
  • Once their country falls to the Legion, the survivors are put in refugee camps, and are forced to go through military training and are put to work rebuilding what's left of their homeland. The narration makes it clear that in general, the people find the ideas of children not being in school, of being controlled by a government that doesn't fairly represent them, of being fed food they have no say in, and of living packed in camps like livestock—all indignities they subjected the Eighty-Six to—to be reprehensible. They still collectively hold great disdain for the Eighty-Six and don't see them as people. This is compounded by how much of their indignities are a result of the Federacy doing what needs to be done to keep them alive and the Legion at bay. Everything the Republic did was outright malicious, selfish, and done with the express intention of wiping out the Eighty-Six.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • The Republic classified the Eighty-Six as livestock in human form and forced them to serve as "processors" for their "unmanned drones". So when the Legion finally invades they suffer from a truly horrific example of this trope, as Republic citizens captured by the Legion are treated as literal livestock whose brains are harvested to serve as "processors" for the Legion's new Shepherds Notably, everyone else is implied to be doing the absolute minimum possible to help them recover from the Legion invasion precisely because they think San Magnolia deserved it.
  • The Republic built their entire wartime regime on a brutal and genocidal system of racism agains all non-Alba. However, by Volume 12, this gets turned on them when a plot to backstab the Federacy among some of the Republic elite is exposed. As a result, public opinion of the Republic turns from sour to absolutely hostile, which unfortunately translates to widespread social discrimination of all Alba, including those born in the Federacy. It's so bad that Annette has to be accompanied by a pair of military police bodyguards just to go shopping.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: They're a militaristic nation (though they hardly enter the field themselves) that preaches fascist propaganda to the public to further their own agenda. They also have a so-called master race, the silver haired and eyed Albas, like how the Nazis had Aryans, people who were white and possessed blond hair and blue eyes.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Volume 6 mentions that after the revolution which overthrew the previous monarchy 300 years ago, the Republic moved to outlaw all religious texts, considering religion to be a symbol of the country's decadent feudal past. As a result, the overwhelming majority of San Magnolians have no experience with religion, even if some vestiges persist into the modern day (such as religious holidays still being celebrated despite nobody really knowing the original meanings of the holidays).
• People's Republic of Tyranny: Their commitment to democracy was questionable even before the war as all real power was held by the former aristocracy. The truth was that they were a quasi aristocratic oligarchy pretending to be a democracy. This is why they had no problem stripping millions of citizens of their rights, as the war simply exposed the bed of lies that their government was built upon.
• Propaganda Machine: The newscasts in the country are government controlled and enforce the lies that Juggernauts are autonomous robots with no human personnel involved in fighting the Legion. In addition, the anime also shows that Military Police monitor lectures given in academies to ensure social studies and history lessons follow the official government line.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: The Republic's government continuously upholds the glories of its founding 300 years ago, which was due to a massive revolution that overthrew a king and put an end to monarchy in San Magnolia forever.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the Republic is rescued by the Federacy of Giad, the Federacy offers citizenship and asylum to any and all 86. Unsurprisingly, pretty much all of them take up the offer.
• Small Name, Big Ego: San Magnolia was never a very powerful country or even particularly large, best evidenced by how pathetically its actual regular army fared against the Legion (utterly annihilated in two weeks), and the only reason the Legion didn't overrun them any sooner was simply because it was never committing more than a small portion of its forces against them since the majority of the Legion's armies were engaged in battle against the Federal Republic of Giad. In spite of this, San Magnolia's regime constantly went on about its mighty military and righteous campaign against Giad while acting like its maltreatment of its non-Alban populace was somehow justified. In the end, reality caught up with the delusions and the Legion eventually broke through to the 1st District and annihilated the country.
• Stupid Evil: Even if the San Magnolians' assessment of the war situation had been completely accurate, their strategy would still emphasize committing ethnic cleansing-by-proxy over actually winning the war for survival they're fighting. When you account for the misconceptions they never bothered to correct — most importantly, their failure to realize that the Legion managed to get around its 50,000-hour operational limit — their malicious stupidity goes past complacent and becomes straight-up suicidal.
• Too Dumb to Live: If you read through the main page's plot summary and thought to yourself 'that's a really stupid way to fight a war', then congrats, you're right. The Republic is so heavily mired in racism and self-serving propaganda that it's completely detached from reality - there's a reason it doesn't survive past the first novel, and that the rest of the series has the protagonists fighting for people who actually take their military and social responsibilities seriously.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • After being saved from complete annihilation by the Federal Republic of Giad the surviving population quickly begin to view their saviors with disdain due to being put to work in restoring their own country, receiving mandatory combat training and having to make due with the supplies given to them by Giad. Members of the interim government even begin demanding that Giad pull out of the Republic and return all of the 86 they took into custody. Said members of government even attempt to sabotage the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package's first mission by providing a faulty map. Lena is outraged by this behavior.
  • Even after the Federacy takes a massive risk trying to evacuate the remaining Republic population to their own territory, the Republic survivors simply double down on their racism, and even secretly plot ways to overthrow their Giad benefactors.

Spearhead Squadron

Given that Spearhead Squadron ultimately survived their Suicide Mission and is now serving under Giadian military, this section will cover those that died while fighting in the Eighty-Sixth Sector.

Daiya Irma

Black Dog

Voiced by: Haruki Ishiya (Japanese), Alejandro Saab (English), Rodrigo Acevedo (Latin American Spanish)

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• Can't Spit It Out: Can't bring himself to tell Anju that he likes her. It's Implied that he manages to before he dies.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's a pretty nice guy, but has no problem spying on the girls, including Anju.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In the anime his unit gets blown up after several self propelled mines latch onto it. He is still somehow barely alive after this, but in such a terrible state that Shin has no choice but to Mercy Kill him. The audience never sees his face following the explosion, which implies that he was likely burned beyond recognition.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blonde haired and he's a pretty laid back guy, being rather quick to accept Lena alongside most of the Squadron.
• Leeroy Jenkins: When the group comes across a large lake blocking their way, they joke that Daiya probably would have just tried charging through it.
• The Lost Lenore: Becomes this for Anju after his death.
• Mauve Shirt: Like Kaie he's mildly prominent but he simply doesn't make it.

Kaie Taniya

Kirschblüte

Voiced by: Haruka Shiraishi (Japanese), Jenny Yokobori (English), Gabriela Guzmán (Latin American Spanish)

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• Face Death with Dignity: Her last words, "I don't want to die," are spoken so quietly, calmly, and matter-of-factly that she could almost be talking about the weather and not her own imminent demise. Noteworthy in that her words get repeated in flashback multiple times over the next couple of episodes, and in that the Legion Black Sheep units with her neural pattern repeat those words endlessly until their destruction.
• Mauve Shirt: One of the more prominent members of the squadron, and whose death helps exemplify the pointlessness of the war the Eighty-Sixes are facing.
• Morality Pet: She's one of the members of Spearhead Squadron who admits to recognizing that the relationship between Albas and Eighty-Sixes isn't simply black and white, a sentiment Theo and Kurena clearly don't agree with but otherwise keep to themselves. When she dies trying to take out an enemy legion, Theo wastes no time giving Lena a "Reason You Suck" Speech when she tries apologizing for not being able to save her.
• Off with His Head!: The reason why Spearhead wasn't able to stop the Legion from digitizing her was because when her Juggernaut was destroyed, it was done not by a gun by a blade that took her head off and sent it flying elsewhere. When Anju burned the Juggernaut's wreckage, the Legion had already recovered the severed head and gotten the neural patterns from it.
• Oh, Crap!: Has an epic one when she unwittingly exposes Shin's lie that he can't read or write to Lena.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: In the time we've known her, she's had two examples of this on her end.
  • When Lena contacts Shin to ask him to write reports for her to analyze and he refuses on the basis that he can't read or write, which he clearly can seeing as he's reading a book when he says this, Kaie takes the opportunity to snark that he's just too lazy to actually do it... while Lena is still communicating with them and can hear them, getting Shin in trouble.
  • Later on during her Death in the Limelight episode, she talks with Lena and learns that the reason she actually values the lives of Eighty-Sixes was because she was saved by a supposedly unmanned drone when she was a child that was revealed to her to have been piloted by an Eighty-Six, and so was simultaneously grateful and enraged at their treatment. From this, Kaie concludes that Lena has Incorruptible Pure Pureness and voices this by asking if she's a virgin, much to her and Lena's embarrassment and everyone else's amusement.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: During one battle, she rushes to take out a remaining Legion before Lena can warn her about the mud pit it was in front of. This gets her trapped and makes her easy pickings for the enemy Legion.
• Virtual Ghost: No one was able to get to Kaie before the Legion did, as a Black Sheep with her neural pattern shows up in the next battle. Kurena is able to take it out, but since it's a Black Sheep, there are probably more of them out there. This is confirmed when another Kaie neural copy engages Shin in the Charité operation in Volume 4. One of the few silver linings of the Legion mass upgrading their forces to Sheepdogs is that by Volume 6, the Black Sheep are essentially obsolete, so it's very likely any remaining Black Sheep have been permanently deleted, putting whatever broken copies of Kaie are out there to rest for good.

Haruto Keats

Falke

Voiced by: Daiki Yamashita (Japanese), José Luis Piedra (Latin American Spanish)

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• Curtains Match the Window: Red hair and red eyes, called Rubis. That means he has Imperial blood, which is why he was discriminated against by other Colorata.
• Mauve Shirt: Alongside Daiya and Kaie, he's one of the more prominent members of the Squadron, and he dies right before the final mission.
• Nice Guy: He's a pretty friendly person overall, with a small dose of Chivalrous Pervert.
• Those Two Guys: He's usually seen alongside Theo and Daiya.

Niko Kujou

Sirius

Voiced by: Taishi Murata (Japanese), Mark Allen Jr (English), Diego Estrada (Latin American Spanish)

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• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: One of the tallest members at the Squadron and the first named fatality.
• Black Dude Dies First: He's only member of the original Spearhead Squadron with dark skin and he's the first one to die at the end of the first episode.
• Hidden Depths: A short story set not long after his death shows the rest of Spearhead packing up his belongings after he died, and finding out he was rather fond of collecting music.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Dies shortly after his introduction at the end of episode 1.

Lev Aldrecht

Voiced by: Taiten Kusunoki (Japanese), Imari Williams (English), Héctor Moreno (Latin American Spanish)

An Alban Juggernaut mechanic working with Spearhead Squadron in Volume 1. He eventually dies holding off the Legion alongside other mechanics in order to allow Rito's unit to escape when Gran Mur falls.

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• Cool Shades: Usually seen with sunglasses, even at night. He only takes them off when he's about to say goodbye to the Spearhead Squadron, and even then, his eyes aren't seen up-close.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Volume 4, Rito eventually reveals to Shin & Raiden that Lev ultimately died in a rearguard action against the Legion. Volume 11 gives us more of the story, and subverted this when Rito turned out to be mistaken: the Legion successfully harvested Lev's brain and turned him into a Shepherd.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He's one of the few Albans that treat the Eighty-Sixes with respect, working alongside them and living in the 86th district rather than behind the Grand Mur wall. He was even married to an Eighty-Six and had a daughter with her, and he enlisted with hopes of getting their rights back for them.
• Old Soldier: He's one of the few soldiers from San Magnolia's army before the installment of the Eighty-Six order that returned from the front-lines.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Thanks to his dyed, grease-stained hair and sunglasses, Lev is able to pass as non-Alba, and during his time working with an Eighty-Six unit he doesn't call attention to his race. However, whenever a unit he's working with gets sent on its final Suicide Mission, he reveals the truth to them and gives them the opportunity to kill him before they leave. No unit ever takes him up on this offer.
• Survivor's Guilt: Seeing countless young soldiers being sent to their deaths over the years led to him developing a case of this. This is likely why he chose to remain behind when the Legion overran Spearhead's base rather than retreat with the rest of the unit.
• Token Adult: He's the only person over 20 that's part of the original Spearhead Squadron.

Other San Magnolian military personnel

Jerome Karlstahl

Voiced by: Satoshi Mikami (Japanese), Bardo Miranda (Latin American Spanish)

Lena's commanding officer and a friend to her father Vaclav.

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• Broken Pedestal: Lena loses all respect for him when she finds out he was aware that San Magnolia would never give back the Eighty-sixes their rights back and he just went along with it.
• Brutal Honesty: As he says to Lena during her Heroic BSoD, while he recognized her father as a kind and gallant man, he wasn't afraid to acknowledge that despite his views of how Eighty-Sixes should be treated more fairly, he was likely just a Hypocrite who merely preached these views but made no attempts to make a noticeable difference, and that he doesn't want Lena to turn out like him.
• Despair Event Horizon: His rant to Lena about the many moral failings of the Republic he serves, and how no one has the power to change the current system, makes it clear that he crossed this a long time ago.
  "Hope and despair are the same thing. You want something, and you can't have it. They're two names for two sides of the same coin."
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In a strange, Self-Deprecating Fallen Hero kind of way. When the Legion finally appears on San Magnolia's doorstep, he initially tries to dissuade Lena from going to her post and commanding the Processors since he doubts the Eighty-Six will actually be willing to fight for the Republic, considering the horrendous treatment the Republic put them through, thinking they'll use the chance to leave them for dead as Revenge or simply because defending them will be too troublesome. It's only when Lena proves stubborn that he resigns himself to letting her have her ideals crushed the hard way, picking up an assault rifle and going to Hold the Line.
• Honorary Uncle: Due to the closeness between Jerome and her father, Lena calls him uncle.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: When talking with Lena about her father, he cites him as, while a good man, a Hypocrite who merely preached for the Eighty-Sixes rights while never actually doing anything to help them. There's very little indication that his assessment is wrong, but he's not much better since he takes active part in the Eighty-Sixes subjugation and, like Annette, often encourages Lena to take the same stance.
• Hypocrisy Nod: As he reveals to Lena, he is fully aware of the hypocrisy of the Republic of San Magnolia, stating that in its current state it lacks any of the virtues that their flag represents.
• Killed Offscreen: Lena mentions in Volume 4 that he died after the Legion overran Liberté et Egalité, without going into detail.
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: We find out late in Volume 1 that he has secretly hated San Magnolia for a long time, and he reveals to Lena one of the darkest secrets of the country: that the leader of the very revolution that founded the Republic, Saint Magnolia, was murdered by her own people shortly after their great victory. Exactly how he feels about the Eighty-Six themselves is hard to discern, but it's clear that he absolutely believes the Republic deserves to be destroyed.
• Old Soldier: One of the few surviving members of the original Republic military from before the war.
• Tough Love: He reveals to Lena that he largely gave her command of the Spearhead Squadron because he thought it'd give her a reality-check.

Vaclav Milizé

Voiced by: Masaki Terasoma (Japanese), Brook Chalmers (English), Javier Rivero (Latin American Spanish)

Lena's father.

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• Deceased Parents Are the Best: His death greatly influenced Lena and helped solidify her mindset to help the Eighty-Six.
• Didn't Think This Through: Wanting to impart his pro-86 views onto Lena at a young age, he decided to take her on a helicopter out to the battlefield to give her an idea of their struggles so she would sympathize with them. It certainly works, but it gets him killed and would have gotten Lena killed if Rei didn't show up. It also may have resulted in him handing one of the finest military minds of his generation to the Legion.
• Face–Heel Turn: By virtue of becoming Legion.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The manga adaptation shows the entire upper half of his body from the waist to the head was crushed into paste by debris in the helicopter crash that killed him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His attempt to give his daughter a first hand look at the Republic's oppression of the Eighty-Six resulted in his death, and nearly hers. Unfortunately, the consequences of this botched frontline tour extended even beyond child endangerment as San Magnolia lost one of the few surviving officers from its pre war military. He may have also handed the Legion the very mind they needed to start waging a more strategic war.
• Posthumous Character: Already dead by the time of the story.
• Significant Double Casting: He and No Face share a voice actor, heavily implying that the latter is the Legion assimilated mind of the former.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: His friend Jerome thought he was too idealistic for his own good, trying to live by the ideals of the San Magnolia Republic, even though the government had long since stopped believing in them.

United Kingdom of Roa Gracia

Royal Family

Viktor "Vika" Idinarohk

Gadyuka

Vika is the fifth prince of Roa Gracia, commander of the nation's southern front, and the developer of both Sirins.

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• Colonel Badass: After the Dragon Fang Mountain battle, the United Kingdom's royal family permanently attaches him and his Sirins to the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package and assigns the rank of Lieutenant Colonel to him.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He makes a brief appearance in Volume 3 discussing the operation to eliminate the Morpho with his brother Zafar. He isn't physically described, but the fact he's together with a blonde-haired green-eyed girl makes it obvious it's him and Lerche.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Viktor is a very unpopular figure in the royal court of Roa Gracia, due to the time he tried to download his dead mother's brain into a computer. The only reason most of the court tolerates his presence is due to his immense scientific expertise.
• Lack of Empathy: Played with. On the surface he appears to be a very cold-hearted individual willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his goals. However, it eventually becomes clear that he does have people he cares for and isn't quite the heartless monster his detractors make him out to be.
• The Lost Lenore: Lerchenlied is this for him. All his actions, including the development of the Sirins, are to grant her last wish before her death: of protecting their country.
• The Promise: His promise to Lerchenlied to protect their homeland is ultimately what spurs him on, as he himself holds no particular affinity to the land itself.
• Red Baron: He is known as the King of Corpses or The Serpent of Shackles and Decay due to his high intelligence and development of the Sirins.
• Shipper on Deck: He's quite aware that Shin & Lena have feelings for each other while both of them are painfully clueless to the other, and finds it rather frustrating. To that end, he has contrived on occasion to set up situations where the two of them find themselves alone with each other, most notably in Volume 6 after the military briefing where he lets Lena know an escort will be taking her back to her quarters before leaving. Naturally, said escort is Shin, who also didn't know who he'd be accompanying.
• The Social Expert: He has an uncanny knack for being able to read people, which is most evident when he correctly deduces exactly what Shin is having an existential crisis about in Volume 6 based off of contextual clues and his odd behavior, and tells him so to his face. He was also savvy enough earlier in Volume 5 to recognize that the optics of a lovely, young, single woman meeting him alone at night could easily go wrong in so many ways, and made sure not to proceed with any interactions with her until another woman was present, if only to serve as a witness.
• Super-Intelligence: The gift of his royal bloodline, to the point that he was able to perform surgery and create an AI model at age 5.
• Survivor's Guilt: The death of Lerchenlied due to pushing him out of the way of an attack that should have killed him was one of the few things that actually made him feel regret. It was what spurred him to create Lerche and the other Sirins.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Fits this trope like a glove in a side story. Like any other child, he used to bring his brother random objects he found and present them as gifts. Unlike any other child's, those "gifts" ranged from insect wings to a cat's eyeball. It's stated he only stopped because his brother told him to, and not because he recognized the acts themselves as morally wrong.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He was just a five-year old boy who desperately wanted to know his mother who died giving birth to him, so he extracted her brain from her cryogenically frozen body and created a new AI system based off the neural data. When he was punished for doing this by the royal family, he defiantly posted on the Internet what he'd done. One of the people who ended up reading his posts was Zelene Birkenbaum from the Empire of Giad, who would then use this knowledge as the foundation of her Legion project.

Zafar Idinarohk

Voiced by: Masaaki Mizunaka (Japanese)

First prince of Roa Gracia and Viktor's eldest brother.

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Sirins

Lerche

Vika's personal assistant. She was brain-uploaded form of Vika's milk sister Lerchenlied, and the only Sirin to not be kept in storage while not in active combat.

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• Armor-Piercing Question: Asks Shin if he would be willing to sacrifice his human body for greater combat efficiency against the Legion. It, along with the wreckage of a Sirin, make Shin consider a lot of things.
• Berserk Button: The one thing that truly angered her was when she hears Shin and the other Eighty-Sixers reasoning for fighting, which was their pride. As someone who has already died and given up everything, she feels it's her duty to continue the fighting since she and the other Sirins no longer have anything left to lose, whereas he and the Eighty-Six are still alive and can reclaim anything they do lose. For him to continue fighting despite that while not being willing to give up his humanity means he's throwing away his life and his future.
• Catchphrase: "My shame knows no bounds." Usually Played for Laughs.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: She ends up torn apart with only her upper body remaining after an encounter with the Phönix. But since she doesn't need it to live, Vika just removes her head with the intention of rebuilding her body later.
• Stepford Smiler: She was created in the image of someone important to Vika but, the knowledge that the actual Lerchenlied's vestige still cries out inside of her, makes her feel upset because it only brings him misery. This is noteworthy because they aren't really supposed to feel such things to begin with.
• Uncanny Valley: Averted: all other Sirins have some kind of strange tell to them that makes them slightly unnerving to interact with, such as eyes that won't focus properly, odd body movements, and unnatural tones of voice. Lerche is the only Sirin, however, who is completely lifelike in appearance and indistinguishable on the outside from a real human girl without any of these offputting quirks. On another level for Shin, the ghostly voice he hears from Lerche doesn't clash either, as it is identical to her regular speaking voice, unlike all the other Sirins who were male in death but living on as female machine bodies.
• Undying Loyalty: The "original" Lerche chose to become a Sirin in order to continue serving Vika after being mortally wounded. The "current" Lerche seems to have held onto this dedication despite not receiving any of the original's memories.
• Uniqueness Value: Unlike the other Sirins, Lerche is not replaceable due to the fact that Vika feels reviving her once already was pushing the bounds of his promise. Thus if she is completely destroyed, she'll be gone for good as there are no backups of her memories or data.

Ludmila

A Sirin that joined the recon mission to reclaim the Dragonfang mountain. She and her unit are destroyed during the operation in Volume 5 but a backup unit returns in Volume 6, without the memories of her previous counterpart.

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• Armor-Piercing Question: She asks Rito and the others what they want to be if they are afraid of becoming like the Sirins, who represent the end of the path that they are walking in Volume 6.
• Gender Bender: Her donor was a younger boy, who Shin could still hear.
• Go Out with a Smile: She bore a smile on her face even with her body half crushed and her head was dangling by a few wires in Volume 5. Same in Volume 6, when her unit has to use its self-destruct.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Her death along with the rest of the Sirin wind up forcing the rest of the Eighty-Six to question the path that they were on.

Alliance of Wald

Olivier Aegis

Anna Maria

Introduced in Volume 7 as Armée Furieuse Instructor for the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package. His personal name is Anna Maria.

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• Ace Pilot: He's unquestionably the best pilot in the Alliance military and is even capable of matching Shin in a one on one duel. During a simulated training fight he managed to score a mutual kill against Shin; a feat that shocked many of the observing Strike Package members.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: His slender body and long hair coupled with his feminine personal name may trick you, Lena certainly did, in part because she misheard Olivier's name as Olivia.
• Mistaken for Romance: Lena though Olivier was getting close to Shin because "she" had feelings for Shin, turns out Olivier wanted to ask Shin to use his powers to find the Legion that had assimilated Olivier's fiancée.
• The Mourning After: His fianceé, Anna Maria, was killed and taken away by the Legion. As a way to remember her, he uses the same perfume she used to have as well (since pilots can't wear rings), and keeps his hair long enough to use in a ponytail. Not to mention his personal name.
• Seers: He can see three seconds into the future thanks to his bloodline power.

Regicide Fleet Countries

Ishmael Ahab

Captain of the Stella Maris and leader of the Orphan Fleet.

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• A Day in the Limelight: After being largely absent from Volumes 9 and 11, he gets more attention from the narrative in Volume 12.
• The Chains of Commanding: The weight of responsibility of being in charge starts getting to him and he has to vent some of his insecurities to Frederica.
• First-Name Basis: He insists that everyone call him Ishmael.
• Last of His Kind: The rest of his sea clan died fighting the Legion, leaving Ishmael and the Stella Maris as their sole remnant. After the Legion's 2nd large-scale offensive, this is taken even further with so much of the Fleet Countries' population having been destroyed that they no longer exist as a sovereign state and all remaining survivors are absorbed into Giad.
• Shoot the Dog: He and his scouts are the ones who gun down Mele, Otto, and the other survivors of the Hail Mary Regiment, sparing Shin from having to carry the moral burden of killing fellow human beings for the first time.
• Shout-Out: His name and profession are a very obvious reference to Moby-Dick. Fortunately, he takes after the saner of his two namesakes.
• You Are in Command Now: The destruction of the Regicide Fleet Countries as a sovereign state leaves him as the highest-ranked person of their remaining population, and he takes the unofficial position of being the de facto leader of the Fleet Countries' people.

Holy Theocracy of Noiryanaruse

Himmelnåde "Hilnå" Rèze

Himmelnåde Rèze is the religious leader of the Holy Theocracy of Noiryanaruse, and commander of its 3rd Army Corps.

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• A Child Shall Lead Them: She is only fifteen years old, but is already leader of her own corps and the person her nation looks to for guidance and moral support.
• Mirror Character: Is this to Kurena. Both had their families slain and they themselves abused and manipulated by their birth countries. They grew to resent the burden placed on them by other people for no reason, to the point that they came to see humanity itself as despicable. However, while Hilnå is perfectly content to ruin the Theocracy and pull every other country down with it, Kurena realizes that, while there's plenty to hate about the world, it isn't enough to want to crush her friends and allies' futures along with it.
• Mirroring Factions: Her betrayal of the Federacy in the middle of an operation led many to believe hers is the same kind of country as the Republic, that is, one that would freely use and sacrifice the Eighty-Six for its own benefit. It turns out that she has much more in common with the Eighty-Six themselves to a frightening degree.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Having her whole family abandoned to be slaughtered by the Legion and herself propped up as some tragic figure to rally behind has left her warped and disillusioned with her homeland, to the point that she fully admits to wanting to see her country destroy itself and drag humanity along with it. Kurena is especially shaken by this, as it reflects her own desires up to a point.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her fate, and by extension that of her country, is unknown after the second large-scale Legion offensive in Volume 11 as all contact with Noiryanaruse has been lost again.

Legion

In General

• AI Is A Crap Shoot: The Giadian Empire designed them as a fully automated army capable of world conquest, with a six year failsafe built in to prevent them from going rogue. The problem was everyone with the authority to call off the Legion was killed in the revolution that overthrew the empire. As a result the Legion is left following its last orders, to destroy the enemies of an empire that no longer existed. The much vaunted failsafe has also turned out to be useless ever since the Legion found an alternative source of processing power.
• Artificial Stupidity: An in-universe example, with a couple of facets:
  • The Legion's AI is not especially sophisticated, which is why human pilots and tacticians have traditionally been highly effective against it. This is why the introduction of the Shepherds - harvested human minds - is such a huge game-changer.
  • The Legion also has hard-coded limitations on its combat doctrine, both as a security measure by the Empire of Giad and as a result of its creator's personal neuroses. While its Hive Mind is smart enough to recognise these limitations and engage in Loophole Abuse to create workarounds, the way it's forced into such inefficient, roundabout behaviour tends to itself expose and create weaknesses that can be exploited by human tacticians (who have no such mental blocks to wrestle with). As an example, inventing new kinds of ultra-long-ranged artillery to get around its ban on aerial bombardment only ended up giving humanity ideas on how to bypass Legion air superiority and attack their now-vulnerable super-heavy units. They also have hard coded restrictions against the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, giving humanity another potential edge over them.
• Brain Uploading: They have weaponized this by forcibly scanning the brains of human corpses on the battlefield and using the neural data to improve their processing capabilities.
• Combat and Support: Most of their units are meant for combat, but they also have the Eintagsfliege drone swarm clouds which serve to disrupt communications, and the Zentaur launchers which launch forces into battle from far away.
• Gratuitous German: Almost all their standard models have German names. The one exception is the Self-Propelled Mine which is also an example of Gratuitous English. Their more powerful units also avert this, as they use Greek names instead.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: The Legion was originally just an automated weapons system incapable of creative thought with an independent operating time of only six years. This changed once it started harvesting human brains and copying their neural structure. As a result Legion forces have become increasingly creative in their strategies. This also conveniently allowed them to avoid their six year shutdown date.
• Haunted Technology: The Legion absorbed the neural data of countless humans in order to extend their lifespans, which effectively turned them into an army of cybernetic revenants. They're a Legion of ghosts constantly echoing the last thoughts of the poor souls harvested to fuel their war effort. And like true revenants they seek to drag more victims into their hellish state of undeath.
• Hive Mind: This is how the Legion's AI operates, as a massive, networked intelligence. It was originally quite simple and sub-sapient, but its efforts to enhance and sustain itself by harvesting human brains have altered it considerably.
• Humanity Is Infectious: One unexpected side effect of them upgrading themselves with human neural data is that Shepherds can on occasion act in completely irrational ways that upend previously created battle plans. This also disseminates feelings of fear and paranoia to Sheepdogs, which adversely affects Legion combat efficiency.
  • This also means that as the Legion becomes more humanlike, they likewise become more susceptible to deception operations that normally would only fool humans. The Alliance successfully pulls this off in Volume 12 when they leak false information to the Legion, contributing to the success of their operation to destroy the Legion's strategically important dams. No Face himself has nothing but respect for the Alliance for outsmarting him.
• Human Resources: In order to replace their failing processors, Legion forces have started harvesting human brains. They've even created special "headhunter" units whose sole purpose is to seek out enemies with exceptional talents in order to harvest their brains for the Legion.
• I Am Legion: Shinei explicitly quotes Mark 5:9 when describing the Legion in one of the novels.
• Invisibility Cloak: By Volume 12, the Legion has been able to mass produce optical camouflage systems to the point where regular Legion combat units can deploy with them en masse. However, by this point in the war, the Alliance is already aware of the existence of this technology and has already devised effective countermeasures against it.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The Legion is programmed to withdraw if their losses outweigh whatever strategic objective they are trying to achieve. Shepherds are not bound by this programming, which makes fights against them particularly dangerous.
• Machine Blood: Legion units "bleed" a silvery liquid whenever they are damaged or destroyed. This substance is actually the liquid nanomachines that make up a Legion unit's CPU. It's the closest thing they have to a vital bodily fluid and destroyed Legion units even seem to lose all color in the same way a person grows pale when they bleed out.
• Mechanical Lifeform: The Legion at times seems almost like a collection of living creatures that just so happen to be mechanical in nature. The Legion's insectile forms give them a distinctly "organic" feel. Their various support units also form a sort of "ecosystem" that supports their frontline units. They also seem to be "evolving" due to their absorption of human neural data, which suggests that they could become a true example of this trope in the future.
• Noiseless Walker: Despite their size, nearly all Legion units are incredibly quiet when moving on the battlefield thanks to having electrical engines, high-performance actuators, and top of the line shock absorbers. Even the 50-ton Löwe has been known to ambush unsuspecting enemies by silently sneaking up on them.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The Legion Hive Mind is nothing more than a weapon that outlived its wielders, carrying on its genocidal mission because nobody told it to stop. It's why many nations have formulated strategies based around either waiting for it to deactivate or finding a way to order it to stand down. The integration of human brains has complicated this matter, though - the Legion is capable of making crude use of human malice and aggression to make its Sheperds' rebuilt personalities appropriately murderous, and that same malice has fed back into the Hive Mind as it incorporates more Shepherds.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Volume 5 of the light novels states that Legion forces are mostly reddish-black in color. The anime changed this to make them nearly all bluish-silver.
• Schizo Tech: For all their incredibly advanced technology, it stands out that they don't have an air force, with the Eintagsfliege swarms being their main flying units which have very short battery lifespans, nor do they do other things that would be quite beneficial to them in terms of fighting human enemies such as using chemical or biological weapons. These are unbreakable hard-coded limitations programmed into them by the Empire's scientists, and the prohibition on aerial attacks came specifically from their direct creator Zelene Birkenbaum due to her own traumatic past involving bombing raids.
• Spider Tank: Their most common forces, the Ameise, Grauwolf, and Löwe units, are these machines, with the Löwe even having the accurate number of 8 legs. The Dinosauria also has 8 legs.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Most of the Giadian Empire's experimental research was seized by the Legion when they went rogue. As a result the Legion has access to a number of cutting edge technological innovations that its opponents can only dream of. The existence of units like the Phönix also indicates that they've begun developing that technology even further.
• Undying Loyalty: Played with. Technically they are still following their last orders from the now defunct Giadian Empire. So theoretically a surviving member of the Giadian royal family could order the Legion to stand down. However their loyalty to the former empire is questionable now that the Legion seems hellbent on exterminating any remaining individuals with command authority over them, suggesting that they truly have gone rogue.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Volume 6 reveals the Legion has a priority interest in capturing Shin, Annette, and Vika due to their strategic value. Shin himself, due to his ability and prowess, has the potential to be placed into complete command of the Legion, hence why he has been constantly targeted since Volume 4 onwards. However, there is disagreement among Legion Supreme Commanders on this, as the Merciless Queen absolutely wants Shin taken alive, but No Face considers Shin to be far too dangerous and wants him designated as a priority target for termination.
• We Have Reserves: As their name suggests the Legion are vast in number, with more constantly being produced at automated factories to replace any losses. This allows them to easily wage a war of attrition against their enemies who have a much harder time replacing their losses.
• Zerg Rush: The standard tactic of the Legion up until the introduction of Shepherds.

Combat units

Ameise

The Legion's primary scout unit, lightly armed and armored, and equipped with sensor packages and dual machine guns.

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• Cannon Fodder: Ameise are frequently sent in ahead of more strategically valuable Legion units in order to draw fire and set off any mines in their path.
• Meaningful Name: "Ameise" is German for "ant" and these things are as numerous as ants on the battlefield.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: As of the Roa Gracia campaign, they have begun upgrading their machine gun cartridges from 7.62mm to 14mm en masse. This is the equivalent of going from an assault rifle cartridge to an anti-materiel rifle round. Prior to this, the only Ameise that had the 14mm caliber guns were specialized units dedicated to specific roles, such as the Morpho's protectors.
• Target Spotter: Specific groups of Ameise also act as this for Skorpion artillery units, since their sensor packages are excellent observational tools and the Skorpions themselves can't see what they're shooting when they're dozens of kilometers away from the battlefield. They also have to serve as spotters for Löwe units due to them lacking much sensor capability.

Grauwolf

A medium combat unit primarily designed for close quarters battle. Equipped with two high-frequency blades and a 76mm anti-tank rocket launcher that holds nine rockets.

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• Fragile Speedster: The fastest of the mass-produced Legion models. Capable of dealing massive damage with its blades and rockets, but since the primary purpose of this machine is to close in and engage with melee weapons, the design sacrifices armor to give it faster speed to get up close, and even .50 caliber machine guns can chew it up.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Also capable of launching all of its rockets at once.
• Vibroweapon: Its main weapon, the two HF blades on its frontal legs.

Löwe

A heavy combat unit of the Legion weighing 50 tons, equipped with strong armor and a powerful 120mm smoothbore cannon along with a 12.7mm machine gun for engaging small targets.

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• Achilles' Heel: Turns out that the Legion's quantity-over-quality approach to churning out such large, powerful machines has multiple disadvantages:
  • While the Löwen are linebreakers designed for shooting and not scouting, their sensor suites can only be described as extremely rudimentary even when compared to some 1970s tank designs. Get past their accompanying Ameise swarm through speed or stealth, and you'll have an easy time ambushing or escaping them.
  • Their main guns have such limited elevation that they have sometimes been forced to literally clamber over each other to tilt themselves far enough backwards to fire upwards. As one might suspect, this makes them extremely vulnerable to attacks from above, which lighter, more agile units like the San Magnolian Juggernaut and Giadian Reginleif can take full advantage of.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Juggernaut's 57mm cannon is downright puny compared to it, so the only real hope of success for the Eighty-Six to destroy these machines is to hit them in the areas where the armor is weakest. And much like actual tanks, their armor is weakest on the top and in the back.
• Elite Mooks: They're the Legion's equivalent to main battle tanks, with more armour and firepower than most human Feldreß, and being able to routinely solo them is considered to be the mark of an exceptional pilot. When fighting large-scale battles, Shin and the rest of Spearhead tend to make a beeline for Lowe squadrons in order to prevent anyone else from having to deal with them.
• Emergency Weapon: Its machine gun is not meant for primary use and if it has to use it, things have gone south.
• Meaningful Name: Its name is German for "lion" and is called that due to its fearsome prowess on the battlefield.
• Mighty Glacier: They're built for firepower and durability, not speed (although their cruising speed is stated to be a very respectable 100km/h, higher than the maximum speed of most main battle tanks). Spearhead/Nordlicht's tactics against them are mostly based around the fact that if a Juggernaut or Reginleif pilot is skilled/clever/lucky enough to get in close, they can literally run rings around a Lowe.
• Spider Tank: A rare example in fiction which actually fits the word's definition precisely, due to it having 8 legs as opposed to the usual 4 or 6 of other examples, and also fulfills the battlefield role of being a heavy tank (as per the Legion's broadly World War II-era combat doctrine), designed to crack open hard targets like armoured vehicles and fortifications that lighter combat units can't deal with.
• Walking Tank: A much sturdier and heavier example compared to the much more numerous Ameise and Grauwolf types.

Dinosauria

A super-heavy Legion tank type unit that dwarfs the more commonly seen Löwe. This model weighs a crushing 100 tons and is heavily armed and armored with a massive 155mm smoothbore artillery cannon as its main weapon, a coaxial 75mm secondary cannon, and twin 12.7mm machine guns.

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• Attack Its Weak Point: There's only one spot in its armor where the Juggernaut's 57mm gun even has a hope of penetrating: the upper surface of its fuselage.
• BFG: Its 155mm cannon is the largest direct-fire weapon in the Legion arsenal, capable of punching straight through cover and pulling off a One-Hit Kill (or even a One-Hit Polykill) on any human combat vehicle. It doesn't matter how well-protected you think you are - if you stand in front of a Dinosauria, you're dead.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: It's not uncommon to see Shepherds using Dinosauria as their personal units. Suffice to say these Dinosauria tend to be a lot more dangerous than their purely AI-controlled counterparts.
• The Dreaded: They're super-heavy Lightning Bruiser tanks that are often used as command vehicles by Shepherds. Needless to say, they're infamous in-universe as the scariest things a human pilot is ever likely to face.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: A modification of the Dinosauria is introduced in Volume 11 which replaces the 75mm coaxial cannon with a heavy flamethrower for close-in urban combat.
• Lightning Bruiser: This thing is shockingly fast and maneuverable for its size. Discovering this was a particularly cruel surprise for humanity because until Dinosaurias showed up, Legion vehicles were distributed on a fairly straightforward Fragile Speedster-to-Mighty Glacier scale. The fact that they could produce something bigger, tougher, and better-armed than a Lowe that was also far more agile was the stuff of nightmares.
• Praetorian Guard: Dinosaurias are frequently used to guard high-value Legion assets. The Merciless Queen even keeps a veritable "Queen's Guard" of these units for her personal protection.
• Spell My Name With An S: This unit's name is an exception to the Legion's German theme naming, as the German word for "dinosaur" is actually dinosaurier. "Dinosauria" would work for other European languages, namely French, Spanish, and Italian.

Morpho

An experimental Legion railgun capable of destroying targets hundreds of kilometers away. Its massive size means that it can only move along the old high speed rail network.

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• Animal Motifs: The Morpho's physical appearance is often compared to a dragon.
• Arc Villain: It is the primary threat of Volumes 2 and 3, and requires a massive joint operation by three allied nations to take down.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Shin destroys it by shooting in a maintenance hatch between its first pair of wings.
• Combat Tentacles: Its 'wings' are actually made up of thousands of independently mobile strands of energy, and serve alongside its Vulcan turrets as its primary defences against a ground assault. It takes a phenomenally talented pilot in a phenomenally agile vehicle to get close without getting shredded into confetti.
• Cool Train: It's essentially a cross between a Metal Gear and the Schwerer Gustav railway gun.
• Degraded Boss: In Volume 11, another Morpho is deployed to stop the evacuation of San Magnolia. In contrast to how the first Morpho paralyzed the entire continent with fear and required an entire joint operation by 3 militaries to take down, this time, it only gets off a few shots before the Federacy's Trauerschwan experimental mobile artillery unit contemptuously fires back with its own railgun and destroys the Morpho with little effort and hardly anyone batting an eye at it.
• The Dreaded: Its debut sends the entire continent into a blind panic, and with very good reason. If a Morpho gets in range of your front line, you no longer have a front line. If it gets in range of your capital city, you no longer have a capital city.
• Fantasy Counterpart Appliance: It's very obviously a sci-fi version of Nazi Germany's infamous Schwerer Gustav railway cannon, right down to sharing the exact same calibre. The anime doubles down on this with Giadian military intelligence's speculative illustration of the monstrous gun before they see it face-to-face, which looks identical to the Gustav.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The name "Morpho" is derived from the name of a butterfly.
• Gatling Good: Its six 40mm Vulcan turrets would make it the single best-armed Legion vehicle even if it didn't have that massive railgun, and can lay down an almost impenetrable hail of fire.
• Lightning Bruiser: It may be a railway gun, but it's a very fast and well-defended railway gun, with a cruising speed of two hundred kilometres an hour and six 40mm Vulcans (plus thousands of Combat Tentacles) for ripping apart anything stupid enough to get close.
• Loophole Abuse: The Legion's programming forbids it from using aircraft or long range missile systems. This severely limits their ability to strike targets from long distances. However, an artillery gun like the Morpho isn't subjected to these restrictions, which means that it can strike areas long thought safe from the Legion.
• Magnetic Weapons: Its primary armament is a massive 800mm railgun that fires shells at a speed exceeding Mach 23 capable of hitting targets hundreds of kilometers away. It also has a vastly greater rate of fire than any conventional artillery gun (for comparison, the Schwerer Gustav could only fire one round every 45 minutes, whereas the Morpho can manage one every few seconds), and can keep spraying out its gigantic shells until the barrel gets worn out and needs to be replaced. For close-range combat, it also has a half dozen 40mm electromagnetic Vulcan cannons.
• More Dakka:
  • Its six Vulcan turrets give it more direct-fire dakka than any previous Legion vehicle, making it highly resistant to both cruise missile strikes and ground assaults even before its mass of Combat Tentacles come into play.
  • Its railgun also fires incredibly fast incredibly often for something so massive, meaning that getting bombarded by the Morpho feels more like getting hit by an artillery battery than by a single gun, and that it can do a phenomenal amount of damage in a short space of time before relocating to avoid enemy counterattacks. In one sustained burst, it was able to destroy every single one of the Federacy of Giad's forward operating bases and kill 20,000 personnel before its barrel had to be replaced, and the whole reason that every human nation on the continent united to take it down was because of it were able to open fire a second time, it could completely level an entire capital city.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the long-term, deploying Morphos turned out to be a very bad idea for the Legion, for the simple reason that they served as a proof-of-concept for a type of weapon that was (a) within humanity's technological grasp, and (b) was even more effective against the Legion than it was against humanity. The heroics of pilots like the Spearhead/Nordlicht squadron were able to blunt their initial advantage of surprise, and once that was over and done with, all they'd done was give the human race an excellent idea on how to bypass the Legion's formidable air defences and bring accurate, long-ranged firepower back into the war. To add insult to injury, the Morphos themselves had no defence against counter-battery fire from enemy railguns, turning them and similar super-heavy vehicles into nothing more than a colossal waste of resources.
• Stuff Blowing Up: 800mm railgun rounds can carry a whole lot of boom, and the Morpho can spray out a whole lot of 800mm rounds in an alarmingly short space of time. It's considered a citykiller for a reason.
• Superweapon Surprise: Makes its debut this way twice, first by being test-fired against Spearhead Squadron (demonstrating its terrifying range and power) and then by being fired full-auto against the entire Giadian front line (demonstrating its even more terrifying rate of fire and ammo capacity).
• The Worf Effect: The Mirage Spire Morpho managed to singlehandedly decimate the Orphan Fleet and push the Regicide Fleet countries to the brink of collapse. Which makes it all the more shocking when it gets instantly destroyed by an angry Musukura. It really hammers home why these massive leviathans still rule the world's oceans in spite of the many technological developments made by both man and machine.

Self-Propelled Mine

The sole Legion model built to resemble humans and the second smallest besides the Eintagsfliege, Self-Propelled Mines are suicide bombers that charge the enemy and explode.

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• Action Bomb: These things are humanoid-shaped robots that latch onto enemies and self-destruct.
• Child Soldiers: A very twisted example in that some sub-models of these things are built to resemble children to take advantage of the natural human inclination to protect children before detonating.
• Dressing as the Enemy: They occasionally wear human clothing to further their disguises. Although they also make amateur mistakes like wearing San Magnolian uniforms when fighting in Roa Gracia, instantly giving themselves away.
• Not the Intended Use: The Halcyon launches these units out to locate and find enemy units so it can readjust its railguns to target where the SPMs explode at, using them as a crude "alarm" system.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: They are unique among the Legion for broadcasting recordings of crying out in pain and begging for help. Due to being the only humanoid design among the Legion, this trick works in luring in human soldiers trying to help before they self-destruct and inflict massive casualties.

Phönix

A new Legion model first encountered by Shin in the battle of the Charité metro network in San Magnolia. It manages to escape that battle and is later encountered again by the 86th Strike Package in Roa Gracia.

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• Adaptive Ability: Each battle it survives has it come up with a new tactic. The first time it fought Shin and escaped, it developed a Liquid Armor to get around its fragility. The next time it was cornered, it developed the ability to use that armor and its camouflage to use it as a Body Double. In its third and final battle against Shin, it eventually switches to a more humanoid form as both times it lost prior was to humans who abandoned their machines.
• Chain Pain: Its primary weapon is a pair of high-frequency chain blades.
• Decoy Getaway: It developed a means of using its liquid armor as a dummy to avoid being cornered like before.
• Degraded Boss: Its mass-produced version is still a formidable opponent, but it lacks the adaptive Liquid Micromachine capabilities that made the original so deadly.
• Duel Boss: Its first battle against Shin is this when they both fall into the metro terminal's central shaft and are isolated from all other forces. Averted in the second battle as it fights all of Spearhead Squadron with Sirin and Roa Gracian military backup. An Enforced Trope in its third battle as it chases Shin through the Dragon Fang Mountain caves and deliberately collapses tunnels behind it to ensure that nothing, Legion or human, interferes with their battle.
• Fragile Speedster: Being designed for maximized speed, it has minimal armor, and its back is so lightly protected even an infantry battle rifle can do serious damage to it. The problem is being able to hit it in the first place...
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: The Phönix was designed to constantly improve itself in order to become the perfect killing machine. Ironically this would end up becoming a problem for the Legion, as the Phönix became obsessed with defeating Shin following their first encounter. This became apparent when the Phönix disobeyed direct orders during the Dragon Fang Mountain Operation in favor of going after Shin, seemingly reaching the point where even the Legion couldn't control it.
• In a Single Bound: It is able to push its shock absorbers to make incredible leaps that it couldn't do previously after it switches to a bipedal form in its third battle against Shin.
• Invisibility Cloak: It can cover itself in a swarm of Eintagsfliege that obscure its visual profile and makes it almost impossible to see with the naked eye.
• It Can Think: One of the scarier aspects of the Phönix is its almost human level intellect. Furthermore this intelligence is not the product of a human brain scan, rather the machine itself seems to be fully sentient.
• It's Personal: The unit seems to have developed an obsession with defeating Shin following their first encounter, to the point where it ignores orders that conflict with that desire.
• One-Man Army: It singlehandedly invades Revich Citadel Base and wipes out half the base's defenders on its own, taking advantage of its insane maneuverability in the base's tight tunnels and hallways. At Dragon Fang Mountain, it takes off on its own to attack the United Kingdom command center, which puts Lena in extreme danger and only Brísingamen Squadron is available to protect her.
• Recurring Boss: Shin constantly tangles with this machine multiple times.
• The Rival: It's probably the closest thing Shin has to a rival amongst the Legion. This is highlighted by their similar fighting styles and the machine's distinct obsession with defeating Shin.
• Starfish Robots: This is the first new Legion model developed by the Legion itself during the war, thanks to them harvesting 10 million brains from San Magnolia and gaining a vast increase in their intellect. Most troublingly, unlike the previously seen models which were created by Giadian scientists, this machine's design is not based on any human or animal form, but whatever allows for maximum speed and maneuverability as the laws of physics will allow, and ends up looking unlike any Legion model seen before.
• Superpower Lottery: It's able to use its Liquid Micromachines to perform all kinds of incredible functions no other Legion model can. These range from:
  • Adaptive Armor: It develops Liquid Armor that is fluid in movement but hardens when struck by projectiles, which is the basis of how non-Newtonian body armor works.
  • Doppelgänger Attack: A new ability it demonstrates at Dragon Fang Mountain is to create a liquid decoy version of itself.
  • Flechette Storm: It can take globs of the liquid, mold them into needle-like shapes, and launch as projectile weapons using electromagnetic currents.
  • Shapeshifting: It can change its form, first seen when it turns into a swarm of silver butterflies to escape, and again when it switches to a bipedal form resembling a velociraptor in its final battle.
• Terminator Impersonator: This thing is basically the 86-verse's version of a T-1000. It has a similar single-minded dedication to destroying Shin, it relies on heavy use of Liquid Micromachines for its abilities, and the Legion's leader considers it to be a dangerous experimental unit that is difficult to control. It also shares some similar abilities with the Rev-9 unit from Terminator: Dark Fate, despite the movie coming out after the novels it appears in.
• Uniqueness Value: Vika wonders to himself exactly why the Legion designed a one-of-a-kind unit like this. While it may be powerful, the resources used to create it could have been put to use building hundreds of other Legion units, and it is not being manufactured on even a small scale basis either, as the Phönix is a truly unique machine. It is later revealed that it was meant to be used as an experimental model that would gather data in various combat applications before eventually being considered disposable by the Merciless Queen. Subverted later on when the Legion introduce a slightly less sophisticated mass production variant.

Skorpion

A Legion model that acts as a mobile howitzer using a 155mm cannon, with a firing range of 40 kilometers. Also capable of swapping out the cannon for a multi-missile launcher.

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• Death from Above: Uses artillery fire with great effect on the enemy.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Its 155mm cannon is not mounted on a turret, so it has to turn its entire body if it needs to adjust its direction of fire.
• Glass Cannon: The Skorpion is essentially just a really big cannon on legs with a stabilizing "tail" in the back and a downward-feeding magazine on top for extra rounds, allowing it to deal unparalleled damage from afar. Its minimalistic design also makes it surprisingly lightweight, as it weighs about as much as an Ameise. But it has no armor and would be toast in a frontline battlefield scenario.
• Informed Ability: Despite the design schematic showing it can equip a multi-missile launcher, no Skorpion has ever been seen or mentioned to have ever used such a weapon in the entire story.
• Long-Range Fighter: These units serve as artillery support for Legion battalions and stay far back at the rear.
• Not the Intended Use: In Volume 5, they are launched from Zentaurs to assist in the siege of Revich Citadel Base, with their heavy cannons intended to be used to destroy the reinforced doors. However, with the 86th Strike Package and Sirins advancing on Revich, the Legion retask them as a defensive unit on the citadel's walls. While they inflict heavy casualties, it's still a task they are not suited for, as their cannons have a minimum range and can only fire so much before they must be pulled back for maintenance.

Noctiluca

The Noctiluca is the first dedicated naval unit fielded by the Legion. It's a massive submersible battleship armed with two 800mm railguns and a host of secondary weapons. It also appears to possess the capacity for amphibious operations.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: The Strike Passage originally encountered this unit after being sent to take out another Morpho that the Legion had built in the middle of the ocean for some unexplained reason. However, the destruction of this new Morpho soon revealed that it was actually guarding the construction of something far more dangerous.
• Fantasy Counterpart Appliance: The idea of a submersible battleship isn't too far out there. During the interwar years a number of countries experimented with putting large caliber guns on submarines. The most notable example was the French submarine Surcouf, which mounted two 8 inch guns in a turret. Though much smaller than the Noctiluca, it shared much of the same design philosophy.
• Hive Mind: The Noctiluca is controlled by multiple Shepherds melded together into a gestalt consciousness. This is likely because the unit's size and sheer number of weapons make it impossible for one Shepherd to control.
• Magnetic Weapons: It comes equipped with two of the 800mm railguns first made notorious by the Morphos.
• Super Prototype: The Noctiluca turns out to be simply a proof-of-concept design for the Legion to serve as a testbed for further development of railgun technology and merging multiple Shepherd personalities. Despite the Strike Package's fears that this would serve as a mobile superweapon for the Legion, the Noctiluca is ultimately not very important to the Legion war effort. Its value lies in distracting Giad from the fact that the Mirage Spire is a mass driver. After the Noctiluca is severely damaged at the end of Volume 8 and limps away, it is promptly decommissioned and recycled as spare parts by the Legion in Volume 9, some of which are used to build the Halcyon.

Other minor combat units

Biene

A Legion model armed with lasers.

• Awesome, but Impractical: Destructive as its lasers are, the power requirements are prohibitively high, and thus the Legion don't really deploy these willy-nilly.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The high power requirements for their laser weapons means the Legion can only deploy these units if they have access to a power source. So far they have only appeared twice in the entire war: the first time in the Charité underground metro (where they were hooked up to an Admiral unit's nuclear reactor) and the Mirage Spire (where they were tapping into an underwater geothermal power plant).
• Energy Weapon: The first of its kind encountered in the war.

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Stachelschwein

A Legion model designed specifically for anti-air combat.

• Anti-Air: These units operate like mobile C-RAM (Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar) units, armed with a rapid fire autocannon and capable of launching infrared guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).
• Crippling Overspecialization: The fact that these models have not been seen participating in most of the land battles across the continent is a good indicator that they are only able to shoot down aircraft. With most of the continents' air forces permanently grounded thanks to the Eintagsfliege swarms, these models currently don't have much to do in the war.
• Hero Killer: A Stachelschwein is was what brought down Vaclav Milizé's helicopter six years before the story began.
• Shoot the Bullet: As they are mobile C-RAM units they are also capable of shooting down enemy projectiles such as artillery shells and cruise missiles.
• Small Role, Big Impact: They're anti-air weapons in a war with nearly no aerial theatre, but they killed Lena's father and may have given the Legion their greatest general by doing so.

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Stier

A Legion model designed specifically for anti-tank combat.

• Anti-Armor: Essentially a fully automated version of a tank destroyer.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The fragility and extremely slow speed of this unit means the Legion typically only use it for ambush attacks.
• Glass Cannon: It's armed with the same high velocity 120mm cannon as the Löwe, but the unit itself is slow and lightly armored.
• Tanks, but No Tanks: It's very unusual among the Legion army for being the only model that uses treads for movement as opposed to legs. But it's less of a tank and more of a SPG thanks to its severe lack of durability.

Support units

Eintagsfliege

A tiny Legion model small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand, the Legion employs enormous swarms of these nanodrones, so numerous that they blot out the sun. They employ electromagnetic jamming that has shut down global communications, jams radar, and disrupts long-range guided missiles.

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• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: In Volume 5 it's stated that even a single Eintagsfliege emits sufficient amount of EM radiation to kill a person in close range. But considering that Eintagsfliegen are designed to jam radio waves, it mainly emits radio-frequency non-ionizing radiation which the human body can tolerate to a much higher degree than ionizing radiation. And even ionizing radiation requires a hefty dosage to cause immediate death.
• Banana in the Tailpipe: As the Legion's most numerous aerial unit, they make air travel dangerous as they frequently swarm aircraft and destroy their engines by simply flying into the intake vents.
• Grey Goo: They don't absorb everything in their path but they certainly fit the look, being an enormous swarm of nanodrones that cloud out the skies.
• Impeded Communication: Their primary purpose in the Legion army is to jam all communications between the countries of the world, essentially turning each state into a Small, Secluded World and leaving them in the dark as to what is going on outside their borders.
• Meaningful Name: Its name literally translates to "one day flies," more commonly known as "mayflies." Their small size means their internal batteries don't last very long, and there is insufficient space for solar panels, so these machines have to be constantly replenished at automated factories.
• Small Role, Big Impact: They've arguably played a bigger role in shaping the story than any other Legion unit. Their communications blackout was the primary reason why the Republic felt so free to persecute the Eighty-Six, as there was little chance of other countries finding out. They also prevented any sort of meaningful cooperation between surviving nations prior to the Morpho elimination operation.

Rabe

The command units of the Eintagsfliege.

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• Giant Flyer: These things are veritable floating fortresses, measuring a full length of 122 meters.
• Keystone Army: Losing one of these units would be devastating for the Legion due to the sheer amount of information and communications they relay as well as being the key to coordinating the Eintagsfliege swarms. Unfortunately for the humans, they have no air forces or SAM weapons that can bring them down as the Rabe units maintain an altitude of 20,000 meters in the skies.
• Mission Control: They serve this function for the Legion, basically funneling battlefield information to its armies as a kind of high-tech AWACS equivalent.

Zentaur

A 35 meter long Legion unit with a 90 meter catapult developed during the Roa Gracia campaign. Despite its immense size, this is a non-combat machine designed for the sole purpose of launching light units (no more than 10 tons) onto the battlefield from far away.

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• Catapult to Glory: The sole function of these units is to launch lightweight Legion units into battle from a long distance allowing for rapid deployment of harassing forces, almost like a Legion version of paradropping troops behind enemy lines.
• Magnetic Weapons: Its distinguishing feature is its electromagnetic catapult, not unlike the real-life technology such as that used by the U.S. Navy's Gerald Ford-class aircraft carriers, which allows for launches with significantly reduced length as compared to conventional launch catapults.

Other minor support units

Admiral

The power plants of the Legion armies, Admirals are essentially giant versions of the Eintagsfliege that generate power using a variety of methods, most commonly through solar generation.

• Eternal Engine: So big, one has to go into the machine to destroy its core. Its power generation capabilities also aptly make it literally the trope title as well.
• The Power of the Sun: One of the major goals of the Volume 4 operation is to destroy an Admiral that is using an experimental nuclear fusion reactor that could be a game changer in the war.
• Power Source: One of the key units of the Legion, as without the Admirals, their war machine would grind to a halt.

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Aranea

A large spider-like Legion unit operating in the northern battlefront primarily meant for heavy construction duties.

• Construction Vehicle Rampage: The Strike Package runs into it while it is rerouting a river and it tries to haphazardly defend itself.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Each of its legs has optical sensors on the bottom so it can see what it's stomping on.
• Humongous Mecha: This machine is enormous, able to stand in a river and reach a full height of being even 30 meters taller than a dam.
• Improvised Weapon: It does not have any kind of dedicated weaponry, and has to make do with using its hooked crane as a sort of swinging mace and its pair of shearing pliers as makeshift swords.
• Meaningful Name: Shin immediately designates it as "Aranea" upon encountering it, as it resembles a giant mechanical spider with "wings" that are actually sub-beams with additional jibs and masts for its construction equipment.
• Not the Intended Use: This thing was not meant to engage in combat in the slightest and while it does the best it can with its limited mobility and equipment, it still falls all the same.

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Edelfalter

A variant of the Eintagsfliege that supplies other Legion units with power.

• Living Battery: They are generally used to distribute power from Admiral units to other Legion in the field. Most notably a cloud of Edelfalter were used to recharge the Morpho's railgun in Volume 3.

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Tausendfüßler

Legion units that are deployed on battlefields after the fighting to look for and recover useful resources.

• Big Creepy-Crawlies: They're designed in the shape of giant steel centipedes.
• Disaster Scavengers: They can strip-mine a warzone in record time and keep the Legion well-supplied with the raw materials necessary to keep building more units.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: It's revealed in Volume 12 that they are so efficient at their job, they can completely decontaminate irradiated areas that would normally be lethal to humans.

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Weisel

The very backbone of the Legion war machine. Weisels are enormous units the size of city blocks that serve as automated factories constantly producing more Legion.

• Keystone Army: These are absolutely critical units to the Legion war effort, and as such, are often located deep behind Legion lines and heavily defended.
• Mobile Factory: One major reason why these things are so difficult to destroy is that they can move, albeit slowly, and will reposition themselves should the Legion judge that they are in danger from attack.
• Mook Maker: All those thousands upon thousands of Legion? Coming from these guys.
• Nightmarish Factory: The interior of a Weisel is filled with assembly line after line manufacturing more Legion models. The one in Charité takes the cake, as it was partially repurposed to serve as a testbed for experiments on dissection of humans and performance of lobotomies on an industrial-level scale to upgrade all Legion intelligences into Sheepdog status.

Shepherds

In General

• Always Chaotic Evil: Put simply, a Shepherd is a machine for the destruction of humanity that uses a harvested human personality as its base. They're not the original human being, and they can't be reasoned with beyond an extremely limited extent, because copying the parts of the original template that were capable of negotiation and empathy would be pointless for the Legion, and as fresh genocidal half-human monsters are introduced into the Hive Mind, the problem becomes self-reinforcing.
• And I Must Scream: Unlike Black Sheep, Shepherds are fully conscious and appear to retain much of their former human personality.
• Body Backup Drive: Critically damaged Shepherds can upload their minds into a new body if their current one is at risk of destruction. However, this process often damages their neural network beyond repair, so most Shepherds only use it as a last resort.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Legion's programming keeps Shepherds in a perpetual state of bloodlust, which makes any attempts to reason with them pointless as they will attack any human on sight. Communication is only possible if the Shepherd's connection to the wider Legion network is severed.
• Brain Uploading: They are human brains being forcibly uploaded (or willingly in case of Zelene) when they're captured. Unlike Black Sheep or Sheepdogs, they have a full human personality and memory.
• Came Back Wrong: Again, Shepherds are not the original people whose brains were harvested to create them. They're relentless, remorseless genocide machines crudely and imperfectly built from what are often damaged and incomplete copies of the originals' personalities.
• Code Name: Shepherds are assigned a designated code name that serves as their primary identifier during inter-Legion communications.
• Damaged Soul: The Legion builds Shepherds more for combat effectiveness than for complete personality fidelity, and the process is crude, imperfect, and often operating off damaged goods. The end results can usually only be considered half-human at best.
• The Dreaded: The appearance of a Shepherd on the battlefield is a cause for major concern, as their leadership turns the normally predictable Legion into a dangerously unpredictable force. It's even mentioned that countries like the Alliance of Wald didn't even need someone with Shin's abilities to confirm the existence of Shepherds, because the tactical complexity of Shepherd led armies was so unmistakably humanlike. Not only that, but Shepherds tend to pilot particularly advanced and powerful Legion war machines, which become even more dangerous with a near-human intelligence behind the wheel (so to speak).
• Fallen Hero: The majority of Shepherds fought the Legion in their previous lives before being converted to their cause.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: While there are great advantages to a Shepherd being able to think and act like a human, allowing them to plan more complex strategies, the obvious downside is that they also become emotional and irrational like humans, meaning they can be manipulated and tricked like one. The biggest examples are Shourei, who is too tunnel visioned on assimilating Shin to care about the wider battle happening around him and Kiriya, whose bloodlust puts him and his army under unnecessary risk, and whose attachment to Frederica throws him off enough to allow Shin an opening to finish him off.
• It Can Think: The real danger posed by the Shepherds is that they provide the Legion with human level intelligence to command their otherwise mindless forces.
• Lack of Empathy: Copying over harvested human personalities' empathy and compassion for their fellow human beings would be counterproductive when making Shepherds, so the Legion doesn't bother. Some do manifest faint hints of such things thanks to the messiness and imperfection of their creation, but not much and not often.
• Transhuman Treachery: Shepherds are fully dedicated to the Legion's cause in spite of their human origins. In some cases, such as with Rei, this seems to be due to the Legion twisting that person's previous desires into goals that align with the Legion's objectives.

Shourei "Rei" Nouzen

Voiced by: Makoto Furukawa (Japanese), Robbie Daymond (English), Ricardo Bautista (Latin American Spanish)

Shin's brother. His near-murder of Shin led to Shin's telepathy being able to detect Legion drones. He also rescued 10-year old Lena after her aircraft was shot down by the Legion. Eventually he was killed, assimilated, and put in a Dinosauria unit.

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• The Atoner: The guilt from the attempted murder of his brother causes Rei to join the military. Even as a Shepherd he still seeks to make up for his past mistake in his own twisted way.
• Big Brother Instinct: Rei became very protective of his younger brother after nearly killing him and wishes to save him from the brutal oppression of the Republic. Unfortunately Rei's current definition of saving involves cutting off Shin's head and assimilating his consciousness into the Legion.
• Body Backup Drive: The Legion tries to download him into a backup Dinosauria after Shin destroys his original unit. Due to the rushed nature of this download, Rei's programming is highly corrupted and he has only a short time before his consciousness completely disappears. However, this damage also seemingly freed him from Legion control and Rei resolves to spend his remaining time ensuring that Shin made it through Legion territory.
• Cain and Abel: Rei was so angered by his mother's death that he tried to strangle his brother Shin to death for it, blaming him for her death. He ends up regretting it immensely, however, and tried to find Shin again to apologize, which is cut short by his death and assimilation. Shin also tries to find the Legion unit housing his brother's memory and kill it to put his brother out of misery.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the anime Rei's nameplate can be seen on the floor of Shin's Juggernaut right before Shin is seemingly about to be finished off by the Legion.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After being defeated by Shin he regains enough of his free will to rescue the surviving members of Spearhead Squadron. His last act is to escort them to Federacy lines, which results in him being destroyed by Federacy forces.
• Killed Off for Real: Rei "dies" for good when his backup unit is destroyed by the Federacy following his rescue of Shin.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's horrified when he realizes that he tried to kill his own brother in a moment of anger.
• Obliviously Evil: Due to the Legion programming, his love of Shin has been twisted into a belief the only way his brother can be safe is if he is turned into another Shepherd. That this is something that Shin would regard as a Fate Worse than Death is something he is incapable of considering.
• Off with His Head!: Rei fell victim to a Legion "headhunter", which left his decapitated corpse for Shin to later find.
• Rule of Symbolism: Like Shin, he adorned his mech with the image of a headless skeletal Dullahan. Which makes it oddly fitting when Shin discovers his decapitated skeleton still mounted on his "steed", and his later undeath as a digitized mind extracted from said skull, making him a decapitated horseman.
• Tragic Monster: Rei was a good person in life, but all of his positive qualities have been twisted by Legion programming into a mockery of everything he once believed in.

Pale Rider/Kiriya "Kiri" Nouzen

Voiced by: Yūto Uemura (Japanese), Zeno Robinson (English), Carlo Vázquez (Latin American Spanish)

Frederica's personal bodyguard and Shin and Rei's distant relative. His constant battle against the Federacy during the civil war eventually drives him mad with misanthropy. After Frederica was captured and a bloodstained mantle was displayed as "proof" of her "death", he froze in absolute shock, which a Legion headhunter took advantage of to capture him. He's then put in command of a Morpho during the large-scale offensive.

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• Ax-Crazy: Unlike most Legion who kill because of their programming, Kiri seems to actively enjoy committing mass murder.
• Evil Counterpart: Kiri is an example of what Shin could have become if he fully crossed the Despair Event Horizon and became a merciless killing machine.
• General Ripper: Will gladly blow other Legion units to kingdom come if it means killing his target.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Although he now inhabits a long range railgun, Kiri actually prefers fighting opponents up close. Shin finds this out the hard way during their fight, when his usual close range tactics end up playing right into his opponent's strengths.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Since losing Frederica Kiri has been obsessed with only one thing, inflicting untold amounts of death and destruction upon the world.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The anime makes his sclerae as Pale Rider completely red.
• Sanity Slippage: Constantly being on the battlefield during the civil war slowly eroded his sanity. Frederica's apparent "death" robbed him of what little he had left. The resulting "monster" is little more than a rabid animal that even the Legion seems unable to fully control.
• Worthy Opponent: He views Shin, a fellow Nouzen clan member, as an opponent worthy of facing on the battlefield. He even at one point declines to call in reinforcements from the rest of the Legion just to the ensure that the two of them could battle one on one.

Merciless Queen/Zelene Birkenbaum

The head developer of Legion who was supposed to be dead just before the war starts, Zelene currently inhabits an unarmed white Ameise, whose model is from the earliest production batch and painted with her own Personal Mark.

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• An Arm and a Leg: At the end of Volume 6, her Ameise is immobilized when Raiden & Theo blow off all its legs to capture her.
• Arc Villain: Of Volumes 5 and 6. The entire goal of the 86th Strike Package's mission to the United Kingdom is to track her down and capture her intact.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: The capture of her unit during the Dragon Fang Mountain Operation was a major intelligence windfall for the forces opposing the Legion. "Interrogating" her has proven difficult, however, as she has only shown an interest in communicating with Shin and Vika.
• Emergency Transformation: She was mortally wounded at some point, which forced her to upload her mind into a prototype Ameise.
• Irony: She originally created the Legion in order to minimize human casualties in warfare. Instead they became the biggest weapon of mass slaughter in human history.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Volume 6, Shin would have overheated to death in the Dragon Fang Mountain's volcanic crater with nobody ever knowing what happened to him (thanks to the chamber being unmapped and his Para-RAID malfunctioning from the heat), if not for the fact that her own obsession with and dogged pursuit of him wound up leading the 86th Strike Package directly to his location since they were chasing her. Lena even tearfully tells Shin after the battle that he only survived because the Merciless Queen found him first.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Her unit is completely unarmed and lightly armored to boot. As a result she is completely dependent upon her personal escort of Dinosauria for protection. The only "combat" she gets into is a tackle fight with Fido, an unarmed support drone who clearly came off better in the scuffle.
• Not So Above It All: She starts to display decidedly more human emotions after her capture and conversations with Shin, to the point of openly laughing at him after hearing about his rocky relationship with Lena from Vika.
• Villainous Legacy: She's the creator of the Legion and the originator of everything from its combat doctrine to its overarching motives, but even before her capture, she'd been voluntarily superseded as its actual commander by military officers 'recruited' as Shepherds, with No-Face being chief amongst them. In other words, while the Robot War at the heart of the story is mainly about cleaning up her mess, and the current villains are more or less carrying out her will (because it's the driving purpose their minds were rebuilt around), she's no longer really an active participant, and eventually ends up as a Boxed Crook helping humanity out against her creations.

"No Face" (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Voiced by: Masaki Terasoma (Japanese)

A mysterious Shepherd serving as the overall strategic commander for Legion forces on the continent. Little is known about its past or former identity.

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• Archnemesis Dad: Outright confirmed in Volume 11's ending and on Asato's Twitter that No Face and Vaclav Milizé are one and the same, making him this trope to Lena.
• Big Bad: The supreme military commander of the Legion and their greatest tactical and strategic mind. While the Merciless Queen was important as the original Legion Shepherd, she was too hands-off and too unversed in military matters to be an equal or greater partner to him once he got 'recruited', and her capture leaves No-Face as the unquestioned main villain of the series.
• Genius Bruiser: Like several other Shepherds, he prefers to use a Dinosauria super-heavy tank as his command vehicle. As for the 'genius' part... well, see most of the other tropes in his profile.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Most of the large scale Legion operations in the series have been under its direction.
• Irony: The Legion unit responsible for planning the destruction of the Republic of San Magnolia was once a Republic citizen.
• It Can Think: A much greater example than any other active Shepherd - apart from his basic Kill All Humans programming and his amnesia about his past life, he's completely sane and rational. Since he's also the Legion's (extremely talented) supreme military commander, this is very bad news for all concerned.
• Mission Control: Serves as one for the rest of the Shepherds, who act as its battlefield commanders.
• Mysterious Past: Not even it seems to fully remember who they were before they joined the Legion. It only knows that it was originally from San Magnolia and had a wife and daughter whose faces it can no longer remember. The Significant Double Casting mentioned below adds a further, extremely unsettling clue.
• Obliviously Evil: This is why he can only be described as relatively sane. He's perfectly stable and sensible apart from an irresistible urge to wipe out humanity that's so deeply ingrained in him that he doesn't even question or rationalise it. Technically, every Shepherd qualifies as this, but No-Face has the most jarring contrast between his rational personality and irrational goals.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Only its Legion designation, "No Face," is known at the moment. It's even what he calls himself.
• Sanity Has Advantages: See It Can Think above. No Face is the most dangerous and highest-ranked known Shepherd because he's almost completely sane, letting him bring the full power of his formidable military mind to bear on the destruction of humanity.
• Significant Double Casting: He has the same voice actor as Lena's father Vaclav, a San Magnolian officer with a wife and child who died on the front lines. The implications are obvious and disturbing.
• Villain Respect: He seems almost impressed when the allied nations launch their all or nothing offensive to take out the Morpho, noting that his own former country would have never shown such resolve.

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