Characters / Trigun

A list of characters in Trigun.

Beware of numerous unmarked spoilers if you haven't read the manga.

For information regarding the characters as they appear in the 2023 reimagining, Trigun Stampede, go here.

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Heroes

Vash the Stampede

Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon

LOVE AND PEACE!

"I meditate diligently every morning. The subjects are Life and Love. I quit after three seconds."

Voiced by: Masaya Onosaka (1998), Kōki Miyata (1998, child), Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Stampede), Tomoyo Kurosawa (Stampede, young) (JP); Johnny Yong Bosch, Bryce Papenbrook ^note credited as Rich Smallberries (1998, child), Kristen McGuire (Stampede, young) (EN) ^{Foreign VAs}Nacho de Porrata (Spain, series), Ana Orra (Spain, series, child), David Jenner (Spain, Badlands Rumble); Gabriel Ortiz (Latin America, series, adult), Carlos Díaz (LatAm, series, child); Simone Mori (Italian, adult), and Flavio Aquilone (Italian, child).

A tall, blond-haired man who seems to have disaster follow him wherever he goes. He is feared by the people of Gunsmoke as a ruthless, destructive killer. Supposedly responsible for the annihilation of July City, Vash has quite the bounty placed on his head – 60 billion double-dollars, dead or alive! Constantly hounded by often entire towns of people wanting to claim the reward for his capture, Vash is always wandering, never staying in one place for too long (and leaving behind a lot of property damage). In reality, Vash is not a homicidal maniac, but a complete and utter goofball who actually refuses to kill anyone, despite the huge pistol he keeps with him at all times, a prosthetic arm that can switch into a machine gun, and a switchblade in his boot. He has an extreme fondness for donuts (and sometimes alcohol). He claims to be a "hunter of LOVE AND PEACE, searching for the mayfly known as Love". Still, it just may be that he only puts on a facade of being a harmless moron...

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• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While in both versions he's completely distraught over being forced to kill Legato to save someone's life it sticks with him much longer in the anime than in the manga: at least a few weeks as opposed to maybe an hour at most. Justified though, as with Knives directly threatening everyone in the manga, Meryl and the others couldn't let Vash get caught in a Heroic BSoD for too long and had to snap him out of it much more quickly.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In an attempt to save Lina. He's also not too proud to strip naked and bark like a dog. Man has no dignity whatsoever.
• All-Loving Hero: Vash often has to be prodded into shooting the bad guys instead of trying to reason the virtues of life with them. Even then, he refuses to kill humans, even if it means bandaging up the people he just took down. Wolfwood occasionally seems to see Vash in this light, and well beyond his Technical Pacifist stance above he will do anything to save people. From diving into blows that carved the scars all over him to stripping naked and barking like a dog to get a hostage free to training constantly so that his skills are up to pulling off his signature miracles. His whole identity is tied up in saving people. Finally, he's the primary defender of the human race on his planet, and main proponent of the creed that everybody can theoretically live in harmony.
• Amazon Chaser: In Badlands Rumble, he's attracted to Amelia due to her ability to hold off some thugs who were harassing her.
• Angelic Abomination: He normally doesn't use his angelic Plant powers, however at one point in the manga, he loses control of his powers and turns into a frenzied, unstable angel-like beast that could've destroyed everything around him at any second if he wasn't calmed down.
• Angst Coma: Fell asleep for ten days after he was forced to kill Legato in the anime.
• Anime Hair: Vash's blonde (and later black) hair usually stands straight up and is aligned with his head's contours in such a manner that his head has a distinctive V-shaped silhouette, with the top looking like a brush. However, it doesn't stand up naturally.
• Arm Cannon: His left arm is a prosthetic which houses an unfoldable gun that he grips with the same hand when it's deployed. His trademark handgun can also merge with him when gripped to form an extremely destructive Wave-Motion Gun.
• Artificial Human: Like his brother, he's basically a walking Plant.
• Artificial Limbs: Though it is censored for most of the anime, Vash regularly loses and spends time without his bionic left arm in the manga.
• The Atoner: For all of his unintentional acts of destruction, the July Incident in particular.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Often with Wolfwood.
• Badass Adorable: As badass as he is, he's a massive dork who's prone to some pretty keet moments.
• Badass in Distress: In the manga, he's captured by Knives and Legato for eight months, needing rescue from Wolfwood.
• Badass Longcoat: Vash is almost never seen without his distinctive red long-coat with a square button-up collar flap and missing left sleeve.
• Badass Pacifist: In the first four episodes, he doesn't even use his gun to solve problems. And all the Gung-ho Guns that come for him are dead not because of Vash killing them; instead, they are either killed by someone else or chose to kill themselves.
• Barbarian Longhair: As Kanan/Eric/Eriks.
• Bash Brothers: With Wolfwood. Especially in the manga.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: He's ultimately forced to break his Thou Shalt Not Kill vow and kill Legato due to a Sadistic Choice.
• Beard of Sorrow: Grows a short one in the anime following his BSOD after blowing a hole in the Fifth Moon and then again after killing Legato.
• Berserker Tears: A couple times: once after he snaps and almost kills Monev the Gale while in an Unstoppable Rage, and again while Legato is forcing him to kill him (which then causes a Heroic BSoD).
• Beware the Nice Ones: Oh yes. This is a guy who can be cheerful and kindhearted in the middle of a gun fight. It takes a LOT to get him legitimately angry, but when it happens...
• BFG: He is the BFG. Visually, his arm will meld with his gun when he is about to unleash it, but technically his entire body is part of the setup.
• Big Eater: One bullet costs him as much as half a pizza, so he tries not to shoot his gun if at all possible. He can also demolish a box of donuts within 30 seconds.
• Big "NO!": "NOOOO, don't kill them!! BIGGER NOOOOOOO!!!" Vash screams a lot whenever rendered impotent in a life-or-death situation. Also weeps. Man has no dignity to speak of.
• Blush Sticker: Pops up occasionally in the manga.
• Body Horror: Vash's body is interesting. Involves a generous helping of Transformation Trauma. After he finally starts to learn how to use this (traumatically), the first time his angel arm instinctively puts up some 'feathers' to catch a bullet he gets stoned half to death by the townspeople.
• Break the Cutie: Damn you, Legato.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the episode Little Arcadia, Vash breaks the fourth wall and says, "Hey, is that all the time I get?" It is also fairly obvious that he does it again a couple times in the series.
• Bring My Red Jacket: One of the most iconic ones in anime, up there with Alucard and Ed, also makes him noticeable in bounties and to those after him.
• Broken Ace: Vash is without question the greatest gunslinger on the planet, he's apparently immortal (in terms of never aging), he has an actual Healing Factor and incredible resistance to pain, and he is dedicated to saving everyone, no matter who they are. Unfortunately, Vash lives in a world that leans considerably more towards the cynical side than his ideology requires, and so it is repeatedly deconstructed in various subtle and direct methods throughout the series. Case in point, Vash's dedication to preserving human life over all else has left him horribly mutilated and caused a huge bounty to be placed on his head as a result of the property damage that results whenever he gets into a fight (and in a Vicious Cycle, this just makes things worse; more people come to kill Vash for his bounty/terrible reputation, Vash escapes after causing yet more horrific property damage, reputation gets worse & bounty gets bigger attracting more gunmen). When finally forced to admit that he simply can not save everyone (namely, when he has to shoot Legato dead to save the lives of Milly and Meryl), he suffers a Heroic BSoD that almost kills him.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: In the anime, after Vash foils a group of robbers' attempt to rob a bank, one of them says to him "You have no idea who you're dealing with, I'm Vash the Stampede!" Vash responds with, "Oh, really? I was under the impression that he was a lot more handsome." Could even double as a Stealth Insult since the guy doesn't even seem to realize Vash just called him ugly, replying with "Are you implying that I'm not Vash the Stampede?"
• But Now I Must Go: The initial premise being informed by just the type of Western that codified the trope.
• Butt-Monkey: As a result of his bounty, he's often subject to being the target of many bounty hunters, with hilarious results.
• Captain Crash: He's a hilariously bad motorcycle driver, in the manga managing to flip a motorcycle with a side car on it within two seconds of starting it up. Although it's kind of a Compressed Vice in the anime, as he is shown to be, in his own words, "a lousy driver" in the movie, but did perfectly fine driving in the anime episode "Escape From Pain."
• Casanova Wannabe: In the anime. When he's not stuffing his face, he's doing some ridiculous stunt to get the attention of a local girl.
• Cast from Lifespan: His Angel arm is ridiculously powerful, but every shot costs him life energy and shortens his lifespan.
• Celibate Hero: Despite his reputation as a womanizer, particularly in the 1998 anime, he's really this. In both the manga and anime it's shown he will fake being passed out in order to avoid sleeping with people who might actively want to take things that far. This makes sense considering that he expresses that he doesn't want women to see that his body is Covered with Scars. Though it's hard to blame him when you'll outlive your romantic partner due to being near immortal.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • LOVE AND PEACE! Comes with a peace sign analogue in the form of crossed fingers.
  • GET DOWN! counts as well, though it usually portends that very bad things are about to happen.
• Chick Magnet: Despite being a Casanova Wannabe a good amount of females develop feelings for him. Amelia, Marianne, Luida, Jessica, Elizabeth, Dominique, Meryl, and Veronica are just some of them. He's also seems pretty popular with the ladies while walking into town in "Lost July".
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: To sucker levels. Basically, if you ask him for help, you'll get it.
• Cool Shades: In the anime, Vash wears small, round, yellow sunglasses with W-bends in the temples whenever he means business. In the manga, he wears about 3-4 different pairs in total.
• Costume Evolution: In the manga, he starts out wearing the exact same red coat he does in the anime, but it gradually gets destroyed more and more through the original three volumes until it's entirely in tatters by its end and abandons it at the end of the third volume. In the first volume of Maximum he switches to a new red coat with a more complex design and accessories on the front, and wears it until he loses it after being captured by Knives at the end of the seventh volume. In volume 10 he switches to a third red coat with a more simpler design that's more similar to his original one, but with more button accessories on the sleeves than the first one had, with this look being the one he keeps for the rest of the series.
• Counting Bullets: Manages to count how many bullets each member of a gang fired at him all at once and know that they all of them were out of bullets except one guy, and even knew exactly which guy it was.
• Covered with Scars: The result of being a Technical Pacifist in a gunslinger world.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: It wouldn't be Vash otherwise! (but just at the beginning)
• Deadly Dodging: In the anime, Vash has often shown the ability to dodge bullets at close range.
• Dented Iron: You wouldn't have realized he was Covered with Scars until after the Shirtless Scene. Reinforces the idea that he is ready to lay down his life for his ideals.
• Determinator: He will do whatever he can to save someone in trouble. In-Universe, the red trenchcoat he wears is the same colour as the red geranium flowers his mother figure claimed represented courage and determination, and which she was very fond of.
• Destructive Saviour: He saves thousands of lives every day, but causes HUGE collateral damage in doing so.
• Disney Death: In Badlands Rumble, Vash is seen to be shot down by Gasback's crew and falls into a quicksand. Near the final showdown with Gasback, he shows up again and explains that he has a very hard piece of jerky in his chest pocket, which blocks the bullet. He is saved from the quicksand by Meryl and Milly.
• Dodge the Bullet: All the time. He's so fast he can deflect bullets by throwing rocks at them. On another occasion he emerged from a hail of bullets completely unharmed; when asked how he did it, he explained that he calculated where the shots would be as they were being fired. Subverted later when he gets shot full of holes while using this same method.
• Doom Magnet: The reason he's called 'a walking act of God' is because collateral damage follows him.
• Dork Knight: He's a completely unstoppable (and non-lethal) warrior and one of the silliest men committed to animation.
• The Dreaded: An rare heroic type. What causes him to become the bogeyman, you ask? The mere mention of Vash's name can cause a panic as people vacate the city they're in, or a riot as people fearfully try to Zerg Rush him for the reward. He's known as a "Humanoid Typhoon" in the anime, and "a walking Act of God" in the manga.
• The Drifter: He has this as his whole thing, except he's also a wanted outlaw and an immortal superhuman. Since his setting is Western-inspired and he has mad gun skills, Chronic Hero Syndrome and multiple issues with settling down, he does a lot of this.
• Drives Like Crazy: He's shown to be a terrible driver in the movie and in the manga, but oddly enough he can drive just fine in the TV anime.
• Driven to Suicide: In the manga, after learning of Tessla's fate, partially due to the hands of Rem as a child, he became depressed and tried to starve himself to death. When Rem brings him a peach to cheer him up, he would've used the cutting knife to end his life right then and there had she not intervened.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Vash never hits a fatal spot, instead opting to hit areas like the shoulders and legs, or a target that can indirectly incapacitate an enemy (such as shooting an overhead luggage rack to dump its contensts on a gang of hijackers and knock them out). Lampshaded in a fight in the manga: Vash is seen practicing his aim on a target board shaped like a person, but it seems he's unable to actually hit the vital spots. The villain of the chapter assumes that, because of this, he must be wounded. He was actually aiming for the non-vital spots, and even hit them more than once.
• Fan Disservice: His famous Shirtless Scene.
• Fastest Gun in the West: Although he is indeed very skilled at gunplay, most people who chase after him do so for the enormous bounty on his head, and most people who run away from him assume he is skilled without any actual evidence to back it up.
• The Fettered: Absolutely abhors killing, and always goes to enormous lengths to ensure nobody gets killed, even if it means putting himself in trouble.
• Friend to All Children: Playing with children is one of his many activities whenever he stays in one place more than a few hours, and if he stays more than a few days the local kids will all consider him their personal minion.
• Fun with Acronyms: In The Lost Plant, six years after Knives' defeat, and going back to his old runaway life, Vash goes by the name VTS to keep at least some lower level thugs off his back.
  • Minor example: the anime's theme song "H.T" probably stands for "Humanoid Typhoon".
• Glasses Pull: And when he does that, his actions are more powerful than any One-Liner.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Rarely happens, but if you piss him off enough to push him into this mode, you're so screwed... Currently is the trope picture.
• Good Is Old-Fashioned: He adamantly sticks to his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule, despite the fact that even children tell him it's stupid and old-fashioned considering Gunsmoke is a Crapsack World where old Earth morals don't apply.
• Gratuitous French: Vash occasionally utters a few words in French, crying for his "maman" and greeting his food with "Bonjour! Je t'aime!". The first time he cries for his "maman" in the anime, he then questions "Why am I crying in French?" He even does it once in a completely serious situation, saying to Leonof, "Your reign of Guignol (French word meaning 'puppet show') is over." The French dubs changes this into Italian.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Seamstress: Vash has this happen to him.
  Vash: Mama, why does this keep on happening to me? I haven't done anything wrong but I'm always in trouble and everyone is always picking on me. What do I do, Maman?!... Why am I crying in French? *Notices he's been crying on boxers* AHH!!!
• The Gunslinger: Obviously. He embodies Trick Shot, The Woo, and The Quick Draw. Vash tries to avoid gunplay whenever he can, but when he gets into it, nothing can beat him.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He can't help but give aid to those who need it, even though he usually puts himself at great risk when doing so.
• Hand Cannon: His revolver, a custom-designed top-break revolver that fires on the 6-o'clock position and is chambered in .45 Long Colt, is a very large weapon that easily dwarfs more conventional handguns and revolvers other characters use.
• Handicapped Badass: Is missing his left arm, a result of Knives confronting him for his pacificism. In the anime, the event occurs during the July incident while in the manga it happens when Vash is tied to a pole by humans from a nearby village.
• Heartbroken Badass: Watched his mother figure, Rem, die when he was a child. As a result, he tends to obsess over her and her teachings.
• Heroic BSoD: Multiple times, particularly after he murders Legato.
• Heroic RRoD: Although not the case in the anime, the manga reveals that every time Vash uses his powers it slowly kills him. Plants were engineered to be that way because they were so powerful. How long they have before they croak is dependent on how black their hair has become.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Most of the destruction blamed on him is actually caused by the extreme measures people take to capture or kill him for the reward; as a result, he has been nicknamed "The Humanoid Typhoon."
• Hidden Depths: He hides his suffering under a playful exterior, he's the closest thing Gunsmoke is getting to the second coming of Jesus in the lengths he goes to save people, and his arguments with Wolfwood over whether or not killing is ever justified is one of the cornerstones of the entire story.
• Hidden Weapons: He has a hidden blade in his right boot and a hidden gun in his prosthetic left arm.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Meryl's short to begin with, but when she's standing next to Vash, she's little more than half his size.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Destroys Legato's Power Limiter during their final showdown in MAXIMUM when it's clear the Gung-Ho Gun won't stand down despite how Knives is poised to kill them all. He then subconsciously starts using his Plant abilities to protect himself from Legato's telekinesis, showing that he'd been holding back during each of their previous encounters.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: He and Knives aged rapidly from birth (by the time they were a year old they were physically around 8), until they reached the physical age of men in their early twenties. Nearly a century and a half later and they haven't aged a day since.
• Important Haircut: In both the anime and manga, Vash goes into hiding after the Fifth Moon incident, living as "Ericks" and growing out his hair. After Wolfwood finds him and brings him out of his 10-Minute Retirement, Lina gives Vash this, signalling his return as Vash the Stampede.
  • In the anime, he is given one by Rem as a child, who models it after her deceased boyfriend, Alex.
• Implacable Man: When he's in the right mood.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Nothing is cooler than a coat with the bottom part torn apart by tons and tons of bullets!
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Could be the Trope Namer for this. And they turn out to be not so improbable since he isn't human.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: To ridiculous levels. He's so pure it's utterly contagious.
• Interrupted Suicide: By Rem when he was a child in the manga.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Early episodes especially emphasize this.
• Irony: In both versions, Vash's bounty is largely the result of Misplaced Retribution, as the crimes of desperados who resemble him, collateral damage from trying to help people, and the destruction of July (which was technically his brother's fault) are all unfairly put on his head. At the manga's conclusion, despite saving his world, he remains an outlaw, this time for what almost everyone around him condemns as a misdeed he actually did: protecting Knives from the Earth Federation and escaping to Gunsmoke with him.
• Keeping the Handicap/Scars Are Forever: He has an absolutely ridiculous number of scars covering his body, as well as a missing arm and a gash in his chest so deep that metal bars had to be put over it to protect it from further injury. He could easily heal up all these scars, but consciously chooses not to do so, considering them his price for being a pacifist in a gunslinger world.
• Kick the Dog: He gets one in the manga, shapely telling Livio that Wolfwood died saving him from himself. They move past it eventually.
• The Klutz: It's all a pose, of course, since his coordination and reflexes are actually superhuman.
• Knight Errant: Describes himself as "a hunter of peace" and "one who chases the elusive mayflower of love." Or something like that.
• Large Ham: Vash, with his sympathy and determination, he's so in love with Rem's ideals that he's so over the top, it's glorious, "LOVE AND PEACE!" never have felt so awesome in any manga for that matter.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: He's known far and wide as the legendary gunman mostly because of the red coat. This may or may not be intentional, as he's the only character with a primarily red wardrobe.
• Leitmotif: "Big Bluff," a melancholic desert rock piece that reflects Vash's life as a whimsical wanderer.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Anime's answer to Darkwing Duck for this trope. He can go from badass to goofy, to being goofy while being badass, to just badass at will.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Vash's Implied Love Interest Meryl echoes his mother figure Rem in multiple ways. Both are dark-haired, kind-hearted women who are devoted to doing good and helping others to the point of pigheadedness.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Do you see him angst about his immortality? No. You see him angst about his brother's Evil Plan and how to save people without killing others. He's dedicated to Rem's ideals and goals.
• Locked into Strangeness. Inverted; When he uses his plant power more and more, his hair slowly turns black.
• Lost Food Grievance: Tends to get... emotional when his doughnuts are harmed.
• Lost Technology: Has an abundance of it.
• Lovable Coward: Part of his Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Love Freak: Now everyone! Let's say very loud - LOVE AND PEACE!!!!!! And again! LOVE AND PEACE!!!!! and again!
• Lovable Sex Maniac: In the 1998 anime he puts on an act like this as part of Obfuscating Stupidity facade, but in actuality he is a Celibate Hero. In the manga he doesn't even put on the act at all outside of two instances of Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • Badlands Rumble seems to play it much harder than the TV series to the point of being offputting even to viewers, but considering he's likely trying to get Amelia to leave the city...
• Mama Bear: He's more of grieving mother than actual father when it comes to humans/living beings he loves so much.
• Martial Pacifist: Unlike most examples which are unrealistically idealistic, Vash has brilliant strategies to save people, and is willing to hurt them if it means more lives can be saved; unfortunately, he lives in a world much more cynical than he'd like.
• Meaningful Name:
  • His name is a corruption of the French word for cow and he's the star of a Cattle Punk sci-fi series.
  • Another example of this trope is more in lieu with the title of the series then his name. It refers to the three guns on Vash: His standard pistol (which Knives made for him), the gun hidden in his prosthetic arm, and lastly the arm cannon he can transform his arm into that's capable of leveling a entire city.
• Momma's Boy: Even though Rem Saverem died many years ago he still loves her as his mother figure, and a big part of his character was inspired by her ideals.
• Mr. Fanservice: Double Subverted; the Vash underneath his clothes is a horrifying mess of scars, but they don't really detract from his attractiveness, especially when covered.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Whenever his Angel Arm gets deployed, whenever a particularly violent gunfight levels the city he's in, but especially when he is forced to kill Legato in the Anime.
• My Greatest Failure: Although it wasn't Vash's intention or even really his fault, his decimation of the city of July is the heaviest burden on his conscience. It was terrible enough that in the manga, when Hoppered and Meryl were privy to Vash's memory, they were both traumatized.
• Necktie Headband: Happens whenever he gets drunk, though neither he nor any of his friend wear ties.
• Nice Guy: Vash is a true sweetheart who sticks out his nose to help whenever he can, weeps Tender Tears and risks his life for total strangers, and persistently believes in the best of humanity in the Crapsack World he lives in. Such efforts aren't always appreciated.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Vash is a master of this, liberally applying Type 3 as part of his Obfuscating Stupidity to make his inhuman abilities look like dumb luck. In an early episode, he bursts in on the villain about to kill a Badass in Distress Action Girl. He confronts the attacker with a look of Tranquil Fury and dodges the first round shot at him with a perfect and highly impressive type 1 of the motionless-translation type; afterwards he gets back into character and does his trademark frantic-looking type 3s. It ends up as a hint at his true badassness.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Big time. Practically the definition of the trope. Vash didn't even fire his gun once until the end of the fifth episode, surviving the previous episodes by making it look like dumb luck. Another early episode had him rocking out on his headphones and going into a bar seemingly ignorant of the current hostage situation, but carefully and methodically diffused the situation all while appearing harmless.
• One-Man Army: He's taken on an entire town of bounty hunters by himself on more than one occasion. And he rarely gets so much as a scratch.
• Opaque Lenses: His glasses already made him scary by comparison.
• Our Angels Are Different: He's actually an Independent Plant, an angel-like alien being that possesses great destructive power, however, he rarely uses. But the few times he has in the past were calamitous enough to give him his infamous reputation as the "Humanoid Typhoon", the $$60 billion bounty, and the official designation as a natural disaster.
• Overly Long Name: Once falsely gives the name "Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobilla Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andri Charton-Haymoss Ivanovici Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser III."
• Pacifism Backfire: He will not kill his enemies nor hurt them in any major way, and the show takes great pains to show that it's a noble calling, but possibly misguided considering the Crapsack World circumstances; Vash's body is a mass of scars, the sixty billion double dollar bounty (until it's removed) means that anybody with a gun and a desperate need of money (which is practically the whole planet) is out to get him, he's constantly arguing with his companions (or at least Wolfwood) about the usefulness/futility of his Thou Shalt Not Kill code, and Knives and the Gung-Ho Guns are out to make Vash suffer by any means possible, which usually involves killing everything that moves and going the extra mile with anybody that Vash so much as gave the time of the day to, increasing in cruelty/kill count up to Apocalypse How levels as the series goes on.
• Person of Mass Destruction: He is (literally) single-handedly capable of destroying cities without meaning to, and is referred to as "the Humanoid Typhoon" throughout the series. He also has the dubious honor of being the first person to be declared a natural disaster; you know you're a Person of Mass Destruction when any damage you cause is labelled an "act of God" by the insurance company.
• Playful Cat Smile: In the first episode of the anime.◊
• Playing Drunk: It's hard to determine at any time just how much of his apparent drunkenness is honest and how much is an act. While at times he is shown to be so plastered he is unable to maintain his Obfuscating Stupidity (such as being so hungover during a shooting competition that he hit all the targets when he meant to miss some), at other times he's been able to snap sober in a blink.
• The Pollyanna: Worldly, weathered, but still very much in love with life and believes that it can always improve for how bad it can get. This is especially evident in MAXIMUM where every Heroic BSoD moment of his is rather brief if meaningful.
• Protagonist Title: Trigun refers to the fact that Vash actually has three guns on his person. He has his standard revolver, a gun one of his arms turns into, and the Wave-Motion Gun that is his Angel Arm.
• Pretty Boy: He's still got the looks that girls will fall for even after living over a hundred years.
• Punny Name: Sounds like vache, which is French for "cow", appropriately enough for someone called "the Stampede."
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Remarkably good at it.◊
• Really 700 Years Old: He does not look past his mid-twenties, but he is around 181 years old.
• Reckless Pacifist: He'll save everyone's life if he can, don't expect him to not cause any destruction though.
• Red Baron: "Humanoid Typhoon".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's associated with red in contrast to Wolfwood, Knives and Legato.
  • "RED, THE COLOR OF DETERMINATION!"
• Reluctant Warrior: Just because Vash is a legitimate One-Man Army doesn't mean he enjoys it. He mainly uses his powers as a means of protecting innocents rather than actually fighting to kill.
• Round Hippie Shades: He wears a pair of yellow-tinted perfectly round sunglasses with zigzagging temples. While Vash isn't exactly a hippie, one of his catchphrases is "Love and Peace!" and he's a peace-loving Technical Pacifist wandering the wasteland trying to make the world better for those that he can.
• Sad Clown: Though he is genuinely a jovial and kindhearted person, his goofier antics serve as a mask for his depression and guilt.
• Samaritan Syndrome: He's on the extreme end of this trope; he blames himself any time anyone gets harmed in his presence, whether its his fault or not.
• Sanity Slippage: By the end of the anime, he is borderline suicidal after Legato forces Vash to kill him.
• Save the Villain: This is basically Vash's core belief; he wants to save both the spiders and the butterflies. This is a sharp contrast with Knives.
  • His whole philosophy is "never kill anyone, ever, and make sure everyone lives". However, the series ultimately comes off as a deconstruction, as it's pointed out subtly and overtly that just because you won't kill the mass-murdering psychopath or the slave trader or whatever, it doesn't mean they will reform. No, not even if you risk your life to save theirs. Also, it makes you responsible for any crimes that they go on to commit, because you deliberately gave them the chance to keep on committing crime.
  • Further deconstructed in Badlands Rumble, as Amelia guilt-trips Vash over the fact that the man he saved, Gasback, was an unrepentant robber with no qualms against killing others who'd had 20 more years of freedom thanks to Vash's actions. On the flipside, Gasback is revealed to be Amelia's father, and Amelia was conceived after Vash had saved Gasback's life.
• Scars Are Forever: Enforced. It's noted that Vash could easily heal all of his various scars, but chooses not to do so, considering it his price for being a Technical Pacifist in a gunslinger world.
• The Scapegoat: Played with. He's got a ridiculously high bounty and is literally a walking insurance claim because of the sheer amount of destruction that follows him, but the reason for said destruction is because he's typically protecting innocents from actual criminals who would destroy the towns and harm folks.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: When he puts these on, it means he just got serious and is now going to open a can of whoop-ass.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Sometimes as part of his Obfuscating Stupidity.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Subverted. Saving a vanquished Knives from the Earth Federation at the manga's conclusion not only results in Vash becoming an outlaw again (aiding and abetting the escape of someone who tried to kill everybody will do that to you), but his brother doesn't live very long afterwards anyway. The subversion lies in how this act of selflessness manages to definitively deflate his archenemy's ego and soothe his inner turmoil, allowing him to pass on peacefully with an altruistic act of his own.
• Shoot the Bullet: With pebbles.
  • Played for drama in anime Episode 24 after Vash disables Midvalley's saxophone. When Midvalley reveals the miniguns hidden inside, Vash notices immediately that one of his shots ended up jamming one of its barrels. Knowing what happens when a bullet can't leave a gun, he screams at Midvalley not to fire. Midvalley, with a knowing smirk, pulls the trigger anyway, whereupon his saxo-gun explodes and kills him.
• Ship Tease: With Meryl in both the 1998 anime and manga. Moments show that the two of them become important presences in each others life. In the manga, he initiates an Indirect Kiss with her, and tells her before facing his brother a final time, that while he isn't the type to make promises, he'd like to try to come back to her. Although he ends up botching that when he goes missing for several months, forcing her to go looking for him again. But it's the thought that counts right?
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Vash to Knives in the manga, several times but especially when he confronts him at the end of Trigun Maximum. A fan translation had him say "You're a wimp with a bulldozer" while the official translation said, "You, by your own efforts, have become a mindless bulldozer who chases weaklings."
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: He switches outfits twice in the manga's run, the first at the beginning of Maximum when he comes out of hiding after the Time Skip, and again in the second half of Maximum where he switches to a third coat that more closely resembles his original one, beginning when he helps Wolfwood against Chapel.
• Slap Yourself Awake: In a variant, Vash concentrates on the pain from his previously injured finger to counteract a villain who uses hypnosis to paralyze people.
• Slasher Smile: As a child, between when he tries to kill himself and when he decides to save Rem.
• Slipped the Ropes: In the anime, he slides out of ropes to protect a young woman from bandits. Said bandits catch him before he can get back into them... the second time.
• Stepford Smiler: Lampshaded by Wolfwood at one point, who observes that his smile doesn't reach his eyes, and that he's "hurting like crazy on the inside".
  • This is why it's such a big deal when Wolfwood notes that one of Vash's smiles is genuine.
• Super-Speed: Vash shoots about six times faster than a human gunman, which is impossibly awesome. Also played with with Dominique the Cyclops. He makes gunpowder explode faster than normal. He breaks physics through physical contact! And we thought he didn't have the girly family superpowers.
• Technical Pacifist: He's only willing to shoot people as long as the shot isn't lethal.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Actually two years (in the manga; timespan unclear in the anime), but given Vash's lifespan it may as well be ten minutes. After the Fifth Moon Incident, Vash ends up in the tiny farming village of Kasted, where he lives under a pseudonym and enjoys a quiet life with the girl and old lady who nursed him back to health. Unfortunately for him, Wolfwood showed up to remind him he couldn't keep running away from his problems.
• Tender Tears: He has a few Manly Tears moments, but he cries quite a bit as a sign of sensitivity and empathy to other people's sufferings (even when said suffering happens to be a completely made up story).
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Not only does he strive to live without killing, he also attempts to spread this philosophy to others, including villains, even at the cost of his own health and safety. Other times, he begs characters who have a just cause for vengeance to forgo it and let things lie. Legato ultimately forces him to take a life, specifically his life, by using his psychic powers to force a crowd of civilians to kill Meryl and Milly and then puts Vash's gun against his head. All Vash has to do is pull a trigger and he saves his friends while killing a villain. Even this puts him into a Heroic BSoD. After he emerges from it, he fights his evil brother with the intent to kill him and does so. The bottom line is that fulfilling this trope outside of an idealistic setting is really difficult, really dangerous, and thus the user must be really really committed to it.
• Trademark Favorite Food: You brought me doughnuts?! Danke, danke!
  • To a lesser degree, he seems to really like pancakes/flapjacks and salmon sandwiches.
• Tranquil Fury: After Monev proceeded to kill a decent amount of the population of a town they were in at the time, he doesn't take it lightly. Proceeding to effortlessly fight him off and make him retreat with a calm but evidently furious look on his face, emphasized by his Glowing Eyes of Doom.
• Transformation Trauma: He does not handle the involuntary unleashing of his Angel-arm well.
• Trauma Conga Line: Doesn't even begin to describe what this guy's been through.
• Übermensch: Played with; his strong personal code of ethics is extreme pacifism, which he imposes on people mostly by obnoxiously getting in their way and humiliating himself. Even Wolfwood admits how effective his persistence is at resisting the dog-eat-dog philosophy of the world around him.
• Unstoppable Rage: However the "tranquil" part of his rage gives out eventually, but it still doesn't make things better for Monev.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: Vash refuses to kill, but his ultimate need to use (lethal) violence is shown as very traumatic. Since the series ends right after the choice, it's hard to tell what his future will be.
  • The manga elaborates it more than the anime, but the aesop is the same: Sometimes, you just have to do it, it's not pretty, it's sad, but it needs to be done, to prevent something worse. These comes to a boil when Vash has to fight with every intention of killing Legato at any cost just to stand a chance during their final duel. Even though he ultimately refuses to pull the trigger, Vash struggles with stopping himself.
• Walking Disaster Area: Known as the "Humanoid Typhoon", he is so potent an example of this trope that the planetary government legally declared him an "Act of God" and a "Natural Human Disaster". The plot of the anime involves him being followed from town to village by a pair of Insurance Agents who investigate insurance claims taken out against the damage caused by Vash simply being in the area.
• Walking the Earth: He usually wanders from place to place with no special reason. Unfortunately, he tends to bring disaster wherever he goes.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Vash the Stampede's Angel Arm is a proper, honest-to-goodness wave motion gun. If it gets shot at medium power, it annihilates entire cities. If it's shot at full blast, it carves gigantic craters in other planets.
  • The best part is that, in the anime, it basically consists of a tiny cylinder of Applied Phlebotinum in his revolver. Talk about miniaturization… ^note  In the manga, Vash himself is the weapon, and he can (and does) fire it without his handgun.
• When He Smiles: When he smiles for real, since most of them are fake. The real ones are rare, but when they come up...
• Window Watcher: In the second episode of the anime, Vash has been hired to guard a young woman named Marianne. He hears the water running in her bathroom, and ties a rope around his waist so that he can lower himself from the roof to peek through the window. She wasn't there, though, and when Milly walks in a second later, he claims that he had been checking the roof for spooks.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: With his idealistic desire to protect others and the massive collateral damage he causes, he'd fit right in a traditional Shounen universe (think One Piece). Unfortunately, he lives in a Crapsack World that's basically the Old West in space, filled with millions of violent people who fear and despise him, along with hundreds of powerful bounty hunters after his head. And that's before dealing with his Ax-Crazy genocidal maniac twin brother and a nihilistic henchman whose only purpose is making people suffer… and his efforts to do so eventually back Vash into a corner.
• Your Costume Needs Work: This tends to be the reaction of anyone when finding out Vash is the Humanoid Typhoon - unless they've seen him in action, at least. Badlands Rumble gets an entire bar laughing at the thought, with one patron even suggesting he might be doing Cosplay.

Meryl Stryfe

"Derringer" Meryl Stryfe

Never enough derringer pistols.

"Does this man look like the legendary gunman Vash the Stampede? That droopy-eyed, weak-looking, bristle-headed, promiscuous-looking donut freak of a man?"

Voiced by: Hiromi Tsuru (1998), Sakura Andou (Stampede) (JP); Dorothy Elias-Fahn (1998), Luci Christian (Badlands Rumble), Sarah Roach (Stampede) (EN)

^{Foreign VAs}Carmen Ambrós (Spain), Georgina Sánchez (Latin America, series), Stella Musy (Italian)

An insurance agent for the Bernadelli Insurance Society, she and her associate Milly were given the task to search for Vash and apply "Risk Prevention" to try and mitigate the collateral damage he causes. She is often seen typing records of her and Milly's exploits on a typewriter to send back to the company. She is nicknamed "Derringer" because of the fifty derringer pistols she carries under her poncho. In the anime, it takes her a while to realize that the goofy, donut-scarfing man that she and Milly always seem to run into is THE Vash the Stampede.

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• Action Girl: She rarely gets the chance to show it, but she's a trickshot artist with a reasonably fast draw. The problem is, aside from local bandits, she and Milly are usually outmatched.
• Action Survivor: How she manages to surviving being so close to Vash the Stampede is a mystery even to her.
• A Day in the Limelight: Episode 14 of the anime, corresponding with Chapters 10, 11, and 12 in the manga. In both instances Vash complains about how little time he got.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In the anime, she attempts to beg the Legato-controlled townsfolk not to hurt Milly and herself. It doesn't work, and Vash is forced to save them by shooting Legato. She also does it again when the townsfolk are tormenting and injuring Vash and he is too far into a Heroic BSoD to do anything about it, so Meryl begs them not to shoot him, then uses herself as a Human Shield while trying to talk them down.
• Awesome, but Impractical: She has about 50 Derringers hidden under her cloak, but they only hold two bullets each. So in prolonged gunfights, she burns through her guns along with their ammo. Furthermore, that many Derringers weighs more than a pair of conventional pistols, 100 rounds, and enough magazines to hold all of that ammo, while also firing a less powerful round than most pistols.
• Boyish Short Hair: To reflect her complete focus on her job. In the manga, she grows it out a bit longer during the two-year gap between the end of Trigun and the start of Trigun Maximum.
• Cannot Spit It Out: In the anime in particular, she falls in love with our favourite blond goofball but has a hard time expressing those feelings, and she can never pluck up the nerve to tell him how she feels. ^note  Their relationship is more ambiguous in the manga. When she finally does seem about to tell him, Milly comes in for a Moment Killer.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In the anime, she gets angry at Vash hitting on every woman he meets, which sometimes leads Milly to tease her.
• Deadpan Snarker: How she keeps her sanity around Milly and Vash.
• Does Not Like Guns: According to the manga, she was this when younger, but her father encouraged her to carry a Derringer to help her fight those who were bigger than her. She took that advice and ran with it.
• Expressive Accessory: Her earrings. They stick out to the side when she's particularly excited.
• Freudian Slip: After Meryl and Milly see Vash's scars, he says he'd rather women didn't, since they might run away. In the English dub for the anime, Meryl has to correct herself after letting "I wouldn't run away" slip. In the original, she says "no they wouldn't [run away]."
• Go Through Me: During Vash's Heroic BSoD in the anime, a whole lynch mob is taking out its frustration and despair on him, especially now that he won't lift a finger to defend himself. In the end, Meryl puts herself between Vash and a gunman to stop the mob from killing Vash, ignoring all pleas from said gunman that he will kill her too if she comes any closer.
• Groin Attack: Episode 19 had Meryl delivering a swift groin kick to a random Mook who got close to her after hearing something about a typhoon (which was possibly a reference to Vash).
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Meryl is the tiniest woman we see in the series, while Vash is one of the tallest men.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: While she's got nothing on either Vash or Wolfwood, She's shown to be a crack shot with her Derringers; once disarming several opponents in rapid succession.
• Intrepid Reporter: At the end of the manga, with Milly.
• The Gunslinger: Despite packing 50 derringers under her cape, she is shown to be a Trick Shot artist, able to aim accurately on the run.
• Handy Feet: Briefly demonstrated when she and Milly are tied and in her sleepwear. After seizing Milly's gun, Meryl uses it with her feet.
• Hidden Weapons: Has about fifty something guns strapped to the inside of her cloak.
• Immoral Journalist: Played for laughs at the end of MAXIMUM where she and Meryl have to find new jobs with the No Man's Land Broadcasting company, prefacing their interview with Vash with a kitschy theme song and assurances to their viewers that they will be showing nude photographs of the outlaw during the program.
• Laughing Mad: Mild case of this in Episode 6 of the anime after Vash uses her as a Human Shield against the dartguns of children "bounty hunters". After commenting on her good use as a shield, Vash laughs loudly. Meryl starts laughing too while pulling guns on him (or the kids; it's not clear who she'd shoot first).
• Leitmotif: "Philosophy In A Teacup," a loungy drum and bass piece that reflects Meryl's dynamic presence.
• Little Useless Gun: Meryl's derringers are neither taken seriously as a threat nor used to deliver meaningful damage over the entire course of both series. This is because of the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality; Milly's stun-gun can be used with impunity, but since Meryl's little guns can't invoke Rule of Cool or the beaten-up-by-bullets effect and she's not a killer, they aren't allowed to actually do much of anything. Still good that she doesn't go around unarmed, and she does take some useful actions; the derringers themselves are just useless. Even though a real derringer can kill you very dead.
  • Averted in the episode "Love and Peace", in which she uses her derringers to help Vash outwit the hostage-takers, shoot the guns out of the deputies' hands, and put a hole through the sheriff's badge.
  • Also averted in Volume 5 of Maximum, where she uses her gun to break a five-way Mexican Standoff.
• More Dakka: At least fifty derringers hidden in her cloak.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Meryl is a legitimately good gunfighter, and is genuinely one of the stronger normal human beings we see. The problem is that she and Milly are fully outclassed by superhuman assassins - they do try and help but there's only so much that they can do against the Gung-Ho Guns.
• Replacement Goldfish: At the end of the anime, Vash seems to view her as similar to Rem.
• Ship Tease: With Vash. Moments in both the anime and manga show they become partial to each other, such as her telling him she wouldn't run away after seeing his scars. And later in the 1998 anime, they share a private moment where she tells him he can stay with her and Milly, if he liked. To which he replied, might not be such a bad idea. In the manga, she and Vash share a deliberately initiated Indirect Kiss, and before his final confrontation with Knives, he tells her that while he's not the type to make promises, he wants to try to come back to her.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In both the manga and anime, she finds herself reluctantly becoming attracted to Vash. It isn't until the final episode that she openly admits it, when Milly tells her that Vash will return one day.
  Meryl: (smiles skyward) "Of course. He wouldn't dare keep a good woman like me waiting."
• Small Girl, Big Gun: An interesting variation, as her guns are tiny but she has 50 of them, adding up to about 36 pounds for 50 derringers and 100 rounds of .22 magnum and easily breaking 40 pounds with the holsters. The entire set-up likely gives Milly's stun-gun a run for its money in the weight department.
• Spell My Name With An S: Her last name – Stryfe (anime subtitles) vs. Strife (manga).
• Tsundere: A fiery Type A. Oftentimes it seems like she doesn't like Vash at all, but they both know its all an act.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: At first glance, you'd expect Meryl to be the girly one, since her attire is more feminine than Milly's. But she's the tomboyish one, being practical and business minded.
• Workaholic: At first, pretty much everything she does is for her job, which is following Vash around to try to prevent the damage he causes.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: In the manga, Vash never calls Meryl by name until things really start to get serious (i.e., Legato and the Gungho Guns show up.) He calls Meryl and Milly both by name for the first time when he's warning them to stay away from him. Meryl grasps the seriousness of the situation because he uses her name.

Milly Thompson

"Stun-Gun" Milly Thompson

"You should never get between people and their pudding!"

"It's like my big-big sister always says: 'Never hold back in matters of the heart'.

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Lia Sargent (EN, series), Trina Nishimura (EN, Badlands Rumble)^{Foreign VAs}Olga Supervía (Spain, series), Marta Barbará (Spain, Badlands Rumble), Mónica Pavón (Latin America, series), Perla Liberatori (Italian)

Meryl's assistant and fellow Bernadelli agent, Milly is plucky and cheerful, and in the anime is constantly trying to convince Meryl that above mentioned man is the real Vash. She's also incredibly tall, and nicknamed "Stungun" because like Meryl, she conceals a weapon underneath her clothes — a huge stungun that can pin enemies to walls without killing them. She likes pudding.

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• Action Girl: Outside of her massive gun, she's built like a brick house and can throw a mean punch when she needs to.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the anime, Wolfwood and Milly are heavily implied to have romantic feelings for each other, while no such dynamic ends up developing in the manga.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Milly is a blonde in the manga, with her hair darkened to a light brown in the anime. The covers for the omnibus edition of the manga gives her honey blonde hair as a sort of compromise between the two.
• Badass Adorable: What else could you call a girl like Milly who lugs around a gun bigger than her partner?
• Berserk Button: Don't get between her and pudding.
  "You should never get between people and their pudding!"
  "Wastage of pudding is punishable by heaven!"
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's very strong and throws a mean right.
• BFG: Her stungun. The thing looks like a portable Gatling gun and can fire projectiles with enough force to flip a truck or launch huge boulders out of a deep underground well.
• The Big Girl: She towers over nearly every other character and can effortlessly carry her stun gun (which looks something like a portable Gatling gun) as if it weighs no more than a baseball bat.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: She is an almost stereotypical example. She once nearly threatened a shopkeeper with her Hand Cannon when in search of pudding... and got it. Only to drop her grocery bags a few moments later to emphasize a point mid conversation.
• Cute Bruiser: She's absolutely adorable, and yet she repeatedly hands hardened outlaws their ass.
• The Ditz: Subverted; she may not be very intelligent, but she is actually much wiser than Meryl.
• Dub Name Change: The European Spanish dub, strangely, changes her nickname from "Stun Gun" to "Super Gunslinger".
• Genius Ditz: In the anime, Milly not only figures out who Vash is several episodes before Meryl, she wins a chess game Wolfwood is sure he's losing with one move. Milly is clearly smarter than she appears.
• Genki Girl: A six foot tall one, no less.
• Gentle Giant: She stands as tall as most male characters, if not taller, and is very easygoing unless she gets good and angry.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Milly's personality is fairly traditionally sweet and feminine. She's very dedicated to her family and wears her hair long - even ties it back with a bow at night. But her choice wardrobe is almost entirely made of men's clothing. The most common outfit she wears is a white dress shirt, tie, suspenders and trousers underneath a beige and green trenchcoat.
• Hair Antennae: Befitting her ditzy personality.
• Her Heart Will Go On: Though it leaves her heartbroken when Wolfwood dies, she eventually recovers and is shown to be in good spirits again by the end of the series.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Older example.
• Intrepid Reporter: By the end of the manga, together with Meryl.
• Lampshade Wearing: When she gets drunk, she gets drunk.
• Leitmotif: "Cynical Pink," a spacey, flighty track that reflects Milly's personality.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: "Dear Father, Mother, Big Big Sister, Middle Big Sister, Little Big Sister, Big Big Brother, Middle Big Brother, Little Big Brother..." In the anime, she describes herself as having ten brothers and sisters.
• Naïve Everygirl: To the point of seeming rather slow sometimes. But she's not stupid, just sheltered.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Much sharper than she first seems. She catches onto some things quicker than some of the other characters at times.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Much like Meryl, she's a genuinely good fighter who's forced to try and survive against the superhumans that Knives and Legato send after Vash. They do try to fight, but there's only so much they can do until Vash and Wolfwood can mop up the mess.
• Pillow Pregnancy: In the anime, uses her great size and strength to smuggle a slave girl away from her masters by having her cling to Milly's stomach underneath her shirt, so Milly can (with Wolfwood's help) pretend to be an expectant mother. While the sight is rather ludicrous (someone immediately asks if she's expecting sextuplets), she still manages to get away with it.
• Shipper on Deck: She supports the ideal of Meryl and Vash being together.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Subverted, since she's very tall.
• Smart People Play Chess: In the anime, she spots Wolfwood playing chess and effortlessly comes up with a move that forces his opponent to resign the game. She credits one of her brothers, who made her play against him all the time when they were both younger.
• Spell My Name With An S: "Milly" in the anime, "Millie" in the manga, though it sometimes appears as "Milly" in the manga too...
• Statuesque Stunner: The fact that she's a giant by the standards of women doesn't make her any less adorable.
• Sweet Tooth: Pudding!
  • She orders gâteau mille-feuille (a fancy, dainty cake made of alternating layers of puff-pastry and custard) and Ceylon tea in her first appearance, and one of the bar toughs states that to do "that gag" right, she's supposed to order a glass of milk with her dessert.
• Technical Pacifist: She carries a "stungun" that can fire X-shaped crosses capable of knocking over a truck.
• Too Dumb to Fool: While she initially appears as The Ditz, she tends to figure things out faster than other characters. Vash once comments that she's very smart, but "doesn't realize how smart she is."
• Trying Not to Cry: In the manga, when Zazie the Beast kidnaps Meryl, Wolfwood tells Milly to stay in a safe place while he and Vash try to rescue Meryl (who they're not sure is still alive). Milly refuses, wanting to help save her. Wolfwood seems about to physically fight her off to protect her, but she stands her ground and prepares to fight him, while holding back tears.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Nicholas D. Wolfwood, the Cross-Punisher

That cross is so heavy because it's full of mercy.

"I picked up my first gun at the age of seven. And I shot. I remember how strangely easy it was to pull the trigger. I actually laughed. Because that one shot was all that was needed to silence that sickening piece of garbage who had the nerve to call himself my guardian. It was that simple. And so I was free."

Voiced by: Show Hayami (1998), Yoshimasa Hosoya (Stampede) (JP); Jeff Nimoy (1998), Brad Hawkins (Badlands Rumble), David Matranga (Stampede) (EN) ^{Foreign VAs}Lucas Cisneros (Spain, series), Toni Mora (Spain, Badlands Rumble), Carlos Hugo Hidalgo (Latin America, series), Massimo De Ambrosis (Italian)

A wandering priest who carries a portable confessional box and the Punisher, a cross-shaped combination machine gun, rocket launcher and pistol rack. He tends to call Vash "Needle-Noggin" (anime) or "Spikey" (manga).

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• Adaptational Wimp: In the anime, Wolfwood bleeds to death after being shot by Chapel. Given the Healing Factor he has, his manga counterpart likely wouldn't have died if the same had happened.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the anime, Wolfwood and Milly are heavily implied to have romantic feelings for each other, while no such dynamic ends up developing in the manga.
• Ambiguously Brown: His exact skin tone is very inconsistent, but he usually has a darker skin tone than the other characters in the official art, presumably because of all the time he spends outside. Averted in the movie, however.
• Anime Catholicism: Taken to the extreme, in part because the setting is alien and post-apocalyptic, and in part because Nightow wanted to include Catholic themes in ways that wouldn't alienate a Japanese audience. The typical elements are present, such as the Jesus Taboo co-existing with Wolfwood's cross-shaped weapon.
• Badass Biker: Especially in the manga, where he's a lot more heavy on the Bike Fu.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Wears a black suit and a white shirt that exposes a fair bit of his chest.
• Badass Normal: In the anime, which was made years before his backstory was released (but was overseen by the manga's creator), he is a regular guy, but still badass enough to comfortably hold his own against the superhumanly skilled Vash and the freaks of nature he has to fight.
• Badass Preacher: He is a priest and wants to make the people of their wretched world secure and happy, especially the children. He pursues this goal with preaching, fundraising, and swinging around a cross-shaped combination machinegun/rocket launcher/pistol rack and taking down anybody in need of an asskicking. He's also a part-time assassin and in the manga, a genetically-engineered killer. That cross of his is so heavy because it's full of mercy!
• Becoming the Mask: Apparently part of his severe moral dilemmas regarding his friendship with Vash; also why he can so easily isolate Vash's Stepford Smiler tendencies.
• BFG: The Cross Punisher. It's a full weapons platform, but it's main use is as a gigantic submachine gun.
• Car Fu: He uses a bike to kill the robot gang.
• Child Soldier: He's been reared to be a gunfighter since the day he was old enough to hold a gun. The exact details depend upon the adaptation. In the manga, he was recruited by Chapel to become an assassin for the Eye of Michael at a very young age. In the anime, Chapel begins to train him to take his place in the Gung-Ho Guns after he shoots and kills his abusive guardian at the age of seven.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Because he's a Knight Templar caught between extreme factions with the goal of protecting the maximum number of people it is feasibly possible to protect and a seriously Dark and Troubled Past, he betrays just about everyone at least once. Very rarely to any real effect, and they were usually expecting it. He's actually got a very loyal nature, so he kind of telegraphs before he does it. Related to Double Reverse Quadruple Agent below.
• Church Militant: Inverted, at least in the manga. He's part of the Eye of Michael, a group of assassins from a religious order that worships Plants.
• Cool Bike: His beautiful shiny Angelina II.
• Cool Shades: They compliment his "cool guy" image rather nicely.◊
• Cross Attack: He works as a travelling priest and carries a large cross wrapped in cloth. He claims that the cross is heavy because it's "full of mercy", but it actually hides a huge gun called the Cross Punisher, with the bottom of the cross housing a machinegun and the top housing a rocket launcher. In the anime, the arms also serve as gun racks to store multiple handguns. In the anime, Wolfwood got his Punisher from an assassin priest. In the manga, Wolfwood got his Punisher from the Eye of Michael, a cult that patterns itself after Christianity but worships Knives as a god and provides him with assassins.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Wolfwood nearly always means well, but he can be harsh and unpleasant to others at the same time. The prime example in the manga is when he knocks Milly out she'll stay out of his way, but during the battle he moves to shield her from emery fire instantly. He was also blind at the time, but did his best to hide it.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Dresses and acts somewhat like a Protestant minister, but does things more in line of a Catholic one (such as hearing confessions). In the manga, he's a member of the Eye of Michael, which claims to worship Plants. In the anime, he's intended to be the successor to the current Chapel the Evergreen, of the Gung-ho Guns, which would basically make him a priest of Knives. Note that the job title he gives himself in Japanese, bokushi, refers typically to a Protestant minister rather than a Catholic priest, but technically just means "clergyman" without specification.
• A Death in the Limelight: The episode "Paradise" focuses on him and ends with his death. In the manga he gets two whole volumes to himself, with Vash only appearing right at the end. Needless to say, following the full reveal of his tragic backstory and the resolution of said backstory, he winds up dying after overdosing on the same chemicals that aged him and gave him his enhanced skills.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The manga has him die from overdosing on the regenerative serum that keeps him alive; while the anime has him die from fatal gunshot wound.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: The anime doesn't go much beyond a morally-conflicted Double Agent, but between the Eye, Chapel, the Guns, Vash, and the children, Manga Wolfwood is playing a lot of sides at once. He's not in control at all.
• Due to the Dead: In the film when it looks like Vash has died he begins wearing his sunglasses in honor of him.
• Dying Alone: But only in the anime; he's with Vash in the manga.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Manga only: the last moments of his life, from the moment he defeats the robot gang to his complete owneage of Chapel and Razlo.
• Explosive Overclocking: During his fight with Livio and Chapel. He overuses his regenerates instantly from his wounds, but dies shortly afterward.
• Expy: Of El Mariachi from Desperado. Also of the lead singer of the Japanese band Ulfuls, which is also why Wolfwood uses a Kansai accent.
• Face Death with Dignity: In the manga, he dies content knowing that he saved Livio even though the cost means his body will give out in minutes, and shares a final drink with Vash. Tragically subverted in the anime, where he attempts to do this, only to break down moments before he passes on from his wound as he admits to himself he doesn't want to die and there's still much he needs to accomplish.
• Friend to All Children: Vash lampshades this in episode 9.
  Vash: "I could swear you were more generous with those children." ^Explanation Earlier, when Wolfwood sees two children whining to their mom because of being hungry, he approaches them and gives them two of the three energy bars he has. Later, when Vash and Wolfwood decide to have a break after running away from some mecha, Wolfwood only gives him a small chunk of the energy bar.
• Good Shepherd: We never get to see him do much in the way of actual priest-ing, but he apparently takes excellent care of the orphanage he runs. This gets played with a bit, since the measures he takes to be a Good Shepherd brings him to some dark places.
• Guns Akimbo: Fully capable of using the Punisher and his pistol at the same time.
• Healing Factor: In the manga, it makes him age faster, and he can boost it with drugs.
• Heroic BSoD: Shortly after shooting Zazie, he breaks down in tears in Milly's arms.
• Heroic RRoD: He intentionally overdoses himself on the drugs that enhance his healing factor fight before his final fight with Razlo, even though he knows it'll kill him in minutes.
• Hypocrite: For all his talk about protecting the innocent, Wolfwood is willing to turn a blind eye to abuses by those in power as shown in episode 11 when he learns the caravan he and the others are travelling with make their money through enslaved women, even condemning a boy who wants nothing to do with it as "selfish" for running away with one of the slaves.
• Improbable Weapon User: Oh sure, we've covered the Punisher, but it reaches a new level in his fight against Razlo when he ejects his pistol's magazine into him. He ends the battle by detonating his entire remaining stock of ammo in a massive explosion.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In part because of how he was raised, Wolfwood is really hard to be friends with. Wolfwood deeply cares about his friends and the people around him, but his cynicism makes this manifest in ways that just come off as cruel. Of note are him pulling a gun on Julius in the anime to drive home the consequences of running away and leaving the people of Fondrique to starve, and punching out Milly in order to protect her from Midvalley in the manga.
• Knight Templar: Wolfwood's a bit too attached to the idea of sacrificing lives for the greater good, and generally believes its okay to get your hands dirty as long as it's for a good cause.
  Wolfwood: Sometimes, we're even driven to become the devil himself.
• The Lancer: To Vash. Their philosophies are directly opposed, but they're still close allies.
• The Last Dance: His manga counterpart goes out on what he knows is a suicide mission and intentionally takes a fatal overdose of regenerative serum just to give himself a fighting chance against Livio/Razlo, all in his determined mission to snap Livio back to his original personality.
• Leitmotif: "Not An Angel," a lo-fi track that showcases the duality of Wolfwood's kindness and darker nature.
• The Magnificent: He's called 'Nicolas The Punisher' a few times in the manga, likely because his use of the Punisher weapon is absurd.
• Mood Whiplash: The extra illustration of the manga volume featuring his death has him waving goodbye to the reader while he's sitting by a couch with a blow-up sex doll on it.
• More Dakka: The Punisher he carries has a rocket launcher at one end, a machine gun at the other, and racks for about half a dozen semi-automatic pistols.
• Mr. Fanservice: Seeing as his chest is constantly visible.
• Murder, Inc.: His Dark and Troubled Past, at least in the manga. Provided him with Training from Hell and low-level superpowers. Anime is more ambiguous; he may have just had a Professional Killer for an Evil Mentor before getting mixed up with the Guns.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Word of God's response to the question of what the D stands for is utterly random, ranging from "Daily Cigarette Intake" to "Dokonokuminomonjawaresumakinishiteshizumetarokakora."
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Rare Male Example. His neckline is low to begin with, but in Badlands Rumble, it's just absurd.◊
• No Kill like Overkill: In the anime he blows up Leonof with the rocket launcher of the Punisher.
• Nun Too Holy: His lifestyle is largely transient and hedonistic, being a habitual smoker and drinker who primarily engages in his priestly duties as a source of income. The manga gives an explanation for both, the former being the result of his very short life expectancy and the latter because he's not so much a priest as an assassin disguised as one.
• Obi-Wan Moment: In the manga, he shares one last quiet drink with Vash in the rubble of the orphanage he just saved by killing Chapel and defeating Livio/Razlo. The last thing he sees before his body finally gives out is confetti thrown by the children in gratitude as a ship carries them off to safety. The contrast between this scene and the brutal fight before it is incredible.
• Pants-Positive Safety: Has the habit of carrying a single pistol (outside his Punisher) in his pocket.
• Papa Wolf: For children in general, but especially those he grew up with at the orphanage in the manga.
• Parental Substitute: As a child (in the manga), he spent an entire year caring for an orphaned baby girl because she was less inclined to cry around him, only stopping because she'd been adopted. Years later, he found her again and saved her life. In the anime, his caring for the orphanage may count.
• Perma-Stubble: Though he is mostly clean-shaven in Trigun Maximum.
• Psycho Supporter: Killed one of the Gung-Ho Guns because he thought Vash's idealism didn't cut it. In the manga, Knives sent Wolfwood to follow Vash for this very purpose.
• Real Men Love Jesus: He seems to struggle with his beliefs at times, but in the end is truly faithful to God. He is also easily one of the best gunmen ever seen, likely only second to Vash and Knives.
• Redemption Equals Death: In the manga he dies after stopping the Eye of Michael from destroying the Orphanage where he grew up, and redeems his childhood friend of Livio. In the anime, after a heated argument with Vash regarding killing Zazie the previous day, Wolfwood opts to adapt Vash's lifestyle. When he fights his mentor later that day, Wolfwood manages to get away with getting a few non-lethal shots at him and letting him live. As soon as Wolfwood turns, Legato manipulates Chapel via mind control into shooting Wolfwood. Presumably, Wolfwood didn't shoot back even after seeing Chapel raise his gun again.
• Pragmatic Hero: Unlike Vash, he sees no problem with killing enemies if the situation requires it.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Defeats Chapel and Razlo, but overdoses on his healing drugs in doing so, killing him shortly after.
• Sex for Solace: He had this with Milly after she showed him kindness when he was a wreck over killing Zazie the Beast in front Vash and the child bystanders
• Sexy Priest: He's attracted Milly's attention and is definitely a loose example of a normal priest.
• Shirtless Scene: After sleeping with Milly, he stands up next to a window shirtless and deep in thought.
• Shoot the Dog: His killing of Zazie in the anime, according to him because Vash wouldn't do it.
• Shout-Out: The sight of Wolfwood carrying his cross weapon echoes the unnamed soldier's from the film Angel's Egg.
• Smoking Is Cool: Not that he cares about dying from lung cancer, since he has an accelerated healing factor, and therefore shorter life span.
• Spirit Adviser: In the anime, when Knives has Vash at his mercy and is about to finish him off, Wolfwood's spirit vocally reminds Vash he still has the Cross-Punisher and urges him to use it. Vash doing so is what allows him to defeat his brother.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: His Cross Punisher is an extremely versatile weapon that contains a machine gun in front and a rocket launcher in the back. It also serves as a carrying-case for several pistols and as a battering weapon and bulletproof shield.
• Super Serum: In the manga, the only reason he's able to stand on Vash's superhuman level and survive is because of biological augmentations performed by the Eye of Michael. He's actually the prototype, with Livio being a more successful attempt.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: His basic philosophy: it's impossible to save everyone and some people are beyond redemption, so its best to try and save as many good people as possible, regardless of the sacrifice. Part of what makes this so bad is that he combines it with Murder Is the Best Solution and Pay Evil unto Evil.
• Tragic Hero: He eventually does want to save people in the same way Vash does, but dies to protect everyone from his own master in both the anime and the manga.
• Would Hurt a Child: Guns down Zasie the Beast in the anime, but justfies it by stating he was a demon not a child.
• Younger Than He Looks: In the manga he's around his early 20s, but looks like he's in his mid-30s. This is because of the special treatments Chapel put him through during his Training from Hell, to give him enhanced strength, reflexes, and Healing Factor.

Major Villains

Legato Bluesummers

"Your reaction was better then I hoped. You're fun. And to think I could kill every man, woman, and child here in the blink of an eye if I wanted to. The power of death is intoxicating."

Voiced by: Toshihiko Seki (1998), Kōki Uchiyama (Stampede) (JP), Richard Cansino (1998), Daman Mills (Stampede) (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Toni Mora (Spain), Gerry Meza (Latin America, series), Vittorio De Angelis (Italian)

A sadistic blue-haired man with psychic powers who works under Knives and has the orders to make Vash's life a living hell.

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• Adaptational Jerkass: Since the anime didn't get to the point where his backstory was brought up, he comes off as completely heartless rather than a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the manga, his puppeteer powers were developed by himself. In the anime, they come from having Vash's left arm grafted; he was presumably a regular human before that.
• Adaptational Personality Change: The anime makes him cool and collected in contrast to his overt psycho manga self, which, given that his background is Adapted Out too, makes him both less angsty and more twisted.
• Ax-Crazy: Though more Sympathetic than many.
• Bad Boss: To the Gung-Ho Guns.
• Badass Longcoat: Spikes of Villainy on one shoulder and a human skull on the other. Also, the coat is white, a color traditionally associated with death in Japanese culture.
• The Bad Guy Wins: His goal was to make Vash experience eternal pain, and he succeeded by forcing Vash to kill him.
• Big Eater: A villainous example; almost every time we see him on screen, he's eating something.
• Boomerang Bigot: Played with no laughs at all. He was at least born human (prior to getting a ton of modifications), but is an Omnicidal Maniac who wants to kill all humans and anxiously awaits the day when his own boss will kill him. He could very well have been modded in childhood by the people he hated so much at the place where they were keeping him. At any rate they paid him more careful attention than your average boy whore, worked out he was planning to kill them all, and the simplest explanation for how they were able to use the method they did for killing him is that they developed the cancellation technology from the coin-box, and were using it.
• Climax Boss: In the manga, he becomes Vash's last major combat obstacle as the gunslinger has an alternate method of defeating Knives and his brother isn't much of a fighter without his abilities.
• Creepy Monotone: Very creepy.
• Death Seeker: And it's never been more disturbing, also a Break the Cutie ploy to Vash.
• Depraved Homosexual: Presumed, based on his slavish devotion and the fact that he is utterly depraved. The Rape as Backstory probably doesn't hurt, unfortunately. Or all the creepy BDSM stuff in the manga.
• The Determinator: Legato's desires to make Vash suffer mentally but also physically pushes him to extreme lengths. His final battle with Vash in the manga is basically him refusing to give up even after being beaten into a bloody pulp by Vash's Angel Wings and being technically paralyzed from the neck down.
• The Dragon: He serves directly under Knives.
• The Dreaded: The first enemy to genuinely unnerve Vash, and the Gungho Guns would rather be Driven to Suicide than to face his wrath.
• Dub Name Change: In Spain, he is known as "Regalt Bluesummers", a faulty transliteration of the katakana making up his name. Normally, the "L" and "R" are interchangeable, but there is one exception. Syllables that end on "-or", "-ar", or "-er" aren't rendered as "-[o/a/e]ru", but as "aa". Legato's name technically is "Legaato", which can be viewed as an emphasis on the "a", as it's usually is, or "Legarto". The first letter can be an "L" or "R", the last "o" may or may not exist, and the "aa" may be a number of things, but it cannot be "al".
• Epic Flail: In his final fight against Vash in the manga, he swings a mean weapon called the "Guernica" that can only be described as this. The head of it is rather artistic and about twice his size. It's also full of guns.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Really hates slave traders, due to his past as a sexually abused slave boy. He also hates traitors.
• Extreme Doormat: Implied to be this with Knives, anyway.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His white coat has chubbier right shoulder which also features metal spikes. He also wears some straps in the other.
• Faux Affably Evil: Even more so in the sub where he mimics Vash's boyish tone to be sarcastic.
• Freudian Excuse: He had a really really really really crappy childhood, and honestly Knives was the best thing that ever happened to him, so he has kind of a reason to hate everybody.
• Goth: He looks the part, but is far more sadistic.
• Go Out with a Smile: A truly twisted example. He dies with a peaceful smile on his face, content that he got Vash to finally take a life.
• Groin Attack: Inverted; he kills someone with a blade on his crotch.
• Handicapped Badass: In the manga, Knives shatters his spine during the Fifth Moon Incident, and he spends most of Maximum paralyzed from the neck down. This doesn't stop him from tormenting Vash and even his own minions, especially once he starts to use a capsule fitted with mechanical spider legs to move around. He eventually regains full mobility by learning to manipulate his own body just as he does with those of other people.
• The Heavy: While Knives has a much more prominent role in the manga, in the anime, it could be said that Legato is in fact the Big Bad of the story while Knives is the silent Greater-Scope Villain. Even in the manga, Legato gives most of the orders (despite the Guns being Knives' army) until the middle of the series and it's actually a big deal when it is revealed Knives is actually doing things on his own.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Originally the hot dog he ate was much worse and more explicit, but it was so disturbing that the editors of the manga forced the author to remove most of it! Didn't prevent him from chopping off the head of the shoe maker and stuffing it in a paper bag.
• Jabba Table Manners: He eats his dinner this way in Trigun Maximum. Justified by the fact that he's had his body crushed by Knives and is now paralyzed from the neck down.
• Kill All Humans: His goal, which is arguably worse than Knives' reasons because he's a Boomerang Bigot who wants every last human, including himself, dead and enjoys it deeply.
• Knight of Cerebus: Everything goes to hell after he shows up, especially in the manga, when he's involved, often to the pure horror of anyone who crosses his path.
• Laughing Mad: By the time Legato starts moving around after Knives shattered his spine, he's gone absolutely insane and sports a huge Slasher Smile while cackling madly throughout the manga.
• Leitmotif: Perfect Night which fits his Cerebus Syndrome nature well.
• Love at First Sight: After using Knives to free himself from enslavement, he falls into a very sick version of this. Upon seeing Knives for the first time, he "wished to know him" and asked to stand at his side.
• Mad Love: Knives invariably treats him like dirt, and in the manga cripples him utterly in a fit of rage. This only enhances his devotion.
• Marionette Master: In the manga, where his range seems to have wires stretch for miles he even applies this to himself. (Yeah, it's Mind Screwy.)
• Manipulative Bastard: To the Gung-Ho Guns.
• Meaningful Name: Legato named himself, so he presumably he meant something by it. The word legato has actually three meanings related to his character: in Latin, it means "ambassador", just as Legato is Knives's lieutenant; in Italian, it is a musical command meaning to have notes played or sung in a connected way, just like his relationship with Knives and the Gung-Ho Guns; and the root of the word is "ligature", a fancy word for bondage, representing his sex slave past and/or sadomasochistic side.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Legato's plan to break Vash via killing him goes off perfectly, but in the end this Thanatos Gambit is for nothing: Vash not only recovers thanks to his friends, but he gains enough confidence to finally face Knives and beat him.
• Misanthrope Supreme: It's unclear whether his primary motivation is whatever he knows of Knives' Start of Darkness, his own crapsack life, the world in general, his complete and utter devotion to a guy who happens to be an Omnicidal Maniac, or his own personal flavor of crazy. He has his own Tear Jerker Start of Darkness in the manga, where he is much less cool but much more The Woobie (although a disgustingly evil woobie), but in the anime he is both more mysterious and more emotionally self-sufficient.
• Never Given a Name: Until some point after falling in with Knives, literally. Probably why he introduces himself so much.
• Nightmare Face: Pulls off some rather impressive ones in the manga.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: He suffers tons of abuse throughout the story (spine snapped in half, shot several times, impaled through the chest by a massive nail, and eventually shot in the medulla). Somehow he always manages to survive, and even come back stronger than before. And he doesn't even have enhanced healing like Livio or Wolfwood.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Near the end of his life in MAXIMUM he recognizes that Vash shares his willingness to die for a greater cause, a trait that Knives shares with neither of them.
• Not So Stoic: In the anime and first three volumes of Trigun, Legato is a very calm individual. Once Knives breaks his spine, he slowly becomes more and more unhinged until by the end he's become a terrifying raving lunatic who snaps back to stoicism before becoming wilder.
• Pet the Dog: In both the anime and manga, he is less than impressed (to put it very mildly) with a group of slavers in the sex trade industry. He kills them and explicitly tells the girls that they're free and to take care of themselves - at least before he ends the world.
• People Puppets: Psychic in nature in the anime, where he also has some degree of telepathy. In the manga, he has the mutant or cybernetic ability to extend nearly-invisible "wires" of some sort that can directly activate other people's muscles.
• Power Limiter: Played with in the manga, the coin case that Legato gives Vash way back near the beginning. Once Vash collects all the coins, the case acts as this. Instead of Vash voluntarily using it, Legato uses it himself just so their final fight will be interesting. In the end, Vash destroys the case and they battle with all their might.
• Psycho Supporter: Dangerously insane he may be, but Legato is completely loyal to Knives. No matter what abuse he may suffer at his hand.
• Psychotic Smirk: More so in the manga.
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: Very, very much so.
• Rape as Backstory: Only implied in the anime, but shown on panel in the manga. Luckily, Knives turned up by coincidence and destroyed the building and everyone else in it before they could rape him all the way to death.
• Sadist: He's an utter, sadistic psycho with a murder habit who likes to torture the lead. His self-loathing also causes this to apply to himself in the manga, where his own victory is secondary to an interesting climax.
• Sadistic Choice: See his Thanatos Gambit.
• Sanity Slippage: By the end of the manga, he's stark raving fucking insane.
• Senseless Sacrifice: The impact of his death in MAXIMUM comes and goes with Vash being unable to ponder it as he did in the animated series due to all the chaos and urgency of the final arc it takes place in.
• Single-Target Sexuality: It would be more accurate to presume that Legato hates everyone who isn't Knives.
• Slasher Smile: Being normally The Stoic makes this creepier.
• Spikes of Villainy: Those same spikes appear on Grave's coffin in the Gungrave series.
• The Stoic: Moreso in the Anime than the Manga.
• Straw Nihilist: Especially in the anime, where everything he says is as pessimistic as he is.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: When the Gung-Ho Guns fail to kill Vash, Legato uses this as his final gambit to ruin his life. It works, until Meryl convinces him to snap out of it and finish his business with Knives.
• Sympathy for the Hero: Despite everything he does to Vash and how much Legato hates him, Legato starts to empathise with him towards the end of the manga.
• Sweet Tooth: Eating something like cheesecake has never been so damn creepy.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: More Like Tall, Dark and Creepy.
• Tearful Smile: Biggest, happiest, most weepy smile you ever saw on a naked child when he was kneeling there in the rubble, realizing that Knives had chosen to spare his life and accept his petition to follow him, and had even asked his name, and he didn't have one to give.
• Thanatos Gambit: Forces Vash to shoot him in the head to save either Milly and Meryl (in the anime) or Livio (in the manga), using this to break him further.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Especially in the manga.
• The Unfettered: His unrelenting pursuit to make Vash's life a living hell is truly terrifying.
• Undying Loyalty: Nothing will sway him anyway from serving Knives.
• Villainous Glutton: Of hot dogs, which are strongly implied to be human meat.
• Villainous Valor: At the end of the manga, it's clear he is one of the most driven people on the planet, rivalled only by Vash himself.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: In the manga where he's got a sympathetic backstory as a nameless sex slave and, like Knives, has let his own pain drive him into becoming an Omnicidal Maniac.

Millions Knives

"Did you have fun living as a human, dear brother?"

Voiced by: Tōru Furusawa (1998), Masamichi Ota (1998, child), Junya Ikeda (Stampede), Yumiri Hanamori (Stampede, young) (JP); Kirk Baily (1998) ^note credited as Bo Williams, Austin Tindle (Stampede), Joshua Seth (1998, child), Megan Shipman (Stampede, young) (EN) ^{Foreign VAs}Ramón Rocabayera (Spain), Ariadna Jiménez (Spain, child); Rubén León (Latin America), Eduardo Curiel (LatAm, child); Sandro Acerbo (Italian), and Francesco Nicotra (Italian, child)

Vash's twin brother. Has a pathological hatred of humans and wants to exterminate them all, as he views himself and Vash as superior beings. He at least has a pretty good reason for it in the manga, since humans mutilated his and Vash's older sister and kill Plants by draining them for energy.

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• Adaptational Badass: In the anime, he's a sublime gunman on par with his brother. In the manga, he chiefly relies on his powers, and tends to be on the back foot whenever he fights on even ground with Vash.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Like Legato's example above, he is clearly described as mentally ill in the manga. At least, he suffers from a severe form of PTSD and some kind of crippling depression - anything beyond that is unspecified. In the anime, he's more of a conventional psycho.
• Angelic Abomination: Makes much more usage of his Plant powers in the manga than Vash, allowing him to sprout wing-like blades and an angelic arm cannon to attack. Even more so when he starts absorbing other Plants to supplement his power, he ends up covered in angel wings and Plant mass as he fuses with his Ark; by the final battle, he's transformed into a vaguely angelic floating eldritch being that warps reality with his very presence.
• The Antichrist: To Vash. He's a homicidal misanthrope with angelic powers that has amassed many followers into a religious cult to bring about the fall of mankind.
• Bad Boss: Cares nothing for his subordinates, viewing them as garbage like all the other humans. Knives is such an awful man to work for that upon their defeat, Caine in the anime and Dominique in the manga actually opt to kill themselves rather than face him for their failure.
• Big Bad: Genocidal? Emotionally unstable? God complex? Yes, yes, and yes.
• Break the Haughty: The final two chapters of the manga lay his ego flat on its back through a combination of Vash defeating him almost instantly after he regenerates for the last time, Vash saving him from being killed by a fellow Plant, and a pair of human strangers showing them genuine kindness.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Vash's Abel.
• The Chessmaster: In the anime, less so in the manga.
• Despair Gambit: His main plan with regard to Vash. In the anime, this ultimately pushes him into a Heroic BSoD.
• The Dreaded: When the man with $$60 billion on his head freaks out about him, you know he's bad news.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In the manga it's very clear that he still loves his brother. Every time they get into a serious fight, they both try to talk the other out of their respective paths in life. It's actually a major moment when Knives decides that he will kill his brother and even then he seems miserable about actually doing it.
• Evil Twin: To Vash. Knives himself see it the other way round, with Vash the evil one for always trying to thwart his plans to wipe out humanity.
• Face Death with Dignity: Once his plan falls apart, he confronts Vash and duels him, implying that he wants to be killed by him. However, when forced to accept the validity of Vash’s philosophy and shown hospitality by two random humans on the world he tried to destroy, Knives used the last of his strength to gift his hosts an apple tree and peacefully (if morosely) disintegrates.
• Foil: He is explicitly set up to be this to Vash. This is especially true in the anime where their powers are literally identical.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In the manga, where he is revived naked.
• Freudian Excuse: In the anime, he snaps and decides to wipe out humanity because he was verbally and physically abused as a kid by a member of the Project SEEDS crew shortly before learning that mankind's poor judgement had rendered the Earth nearly uninhabitable.
  • In the manga, however, he has a bit more of a reason for snapping. He and Vash discovered a secret report that gave them a truly horrific revelation about the nature of morality and their relationship to mankind. See the entry on Tessla below for details.
• Hated by All: By the manga's end, with all of his acolytes either dead or disillusioned, he becomes the enemy of every man, Plant, and insect in his star system. He's so hated that saving him from execution is enough to burn every iota of goodwill that Vash had built up over the course of the story, rendering him a wanted man once again.
• A God Am I: Knives's megalomaniac tendencies and belief that he is a kind of noble crusader or even a kind of Jesus figure. He also claims that mankind are sinners.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: From learning Tessla's story and finding her remains.
• Hates Everyone Equally: He consider all the humans equally as lower life forms, meaning he views their deaths with cold distain instead of passionate rage.
• Heel Realization: In the manga's final stretch, admits that he is responsible for the suffering of the past century and that he can only blame himself for the way his relationship with Vash turned out.
• Horrifying the Horror: Knives might be a mass murderer, but he is visibly freaked out by Legato when he first encounters him.
• Humans Are Bastards: This is his philosophy.
• Immortals Fear Death: Despite what happened to Tessla, it takes him about a century to realize that while long-lived, his life, like all Plants, is finite. He doesn’t take it well.
  • Even during his final fight with him at the climax of Maximum, he immediately freezes when Vash has him at gunpoint, unable to bring himself to commit to either a Suicide by Cop or attempt a Mutual Kill due to the slimmest chance he might still be able to survive if he doesn't move.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Manga only. When Vash shoots Knives in the shoulder in the manga, Knives's reaction is to calmly look at it, looks back at Vash and then slice off Vash's arm telling him to aim better. Even more apparent after he is practically obliterated by Vash's Angel-Arm during the Lost July Incident and, during his recovery, calmly tells Legato to shut up because he's being too loud.
  • In the anime, however, his low pain tolerance is his Achilles' Heel.
• Kill All Humans: Out of hate and fear, rather than believing that their lives are worthless like Legato.
• Large Ham: In the anime, he makes sweeping declarations like a supervillain. He's much more morose in the manga due to him having long gone past the euphoria of being unkillable. When he realizes he can be killed, he doesn't become hammy so much as disturbingly unhinged.
• Leitmotif: The eponymous "KNIVES,", a rapidly swelling spy jazz piece that underlines his megalomania and insanity.
• Major Injury Underreaction: When Vash shoots him in the leg, Knives' reaction conveys more alarm at the fact that his own brother would shoot him than for the injury itself.
• Mask of Sanity: In the manga, after being traumatized from witnessing Tesla's story, he spent an extended period of time pretending that nothing about him had changed. Secretly, the discovery ate away at his sanity until he finally stopped pretending and attempted to exterminate the remnants of humankind.
• Misanthrope Supreme: In both the anime and manga, he wants to exterminate humanity.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: Absorbs all of Gunsmoke’s Plants in an attempt to destroy the human race without dwindling his lifespan.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Moreso in the manga.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Knives is an Aryan on steroids who rants about being a "superior breed".
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Though he lives by the inverse trope for much of the manga, Vash and Chronica show him that without his powers backing him up, guns really are the better choice in the end.
• Never My Fault: Knives is practically a child in his sense of right and wrong. The evils of a few humans are enough to convince him the whole species must die. While humans are certainly to blame for many things, the terrible abuse of Plants in the story happens because there is no other way for humans to survive on the hellish world he stranded them on.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His thwarted attempt to destroy the colony ships as a child results in the people of Gunsmoke missing out on the Great Offscreen War that the other SEEDS colonies got involved in before forming the Earth Federation in the manga.
• Omnicidal Maniac: In the penultimate chapter of the manga, Knives makes it known that even if he killed every last living thing on Gunsmoke, including the Plants, he would not regret it. Vash saving him from Chronica causes him to renege on this declaration.
• One-Man Army: He and his brother share this. The manga takes it further when Knives' one-man war against humanity is weighted heavily in his favour.
• Orcus on His Throne:
  • In the Anime, he relies on Legato to torment Vash while he completes the decades-long process of recovering from the effects of Vash's Angel-arm blast in July City.
  • In the manga, he's a Lazy Bum whose with no deadline to push him to act because he's basically unkillable. This changes when he learns that his power and lifespan are running out (alongside his brother and his sisters), which means he starts moving pretty promptly. Until that point, the only threat to his slow genocide was his brother. Which Knives viewed as a means of teaching Vash a lesson and Vash was a pretty bad mortal foil.
• Our Angels Are Different: He's an angel-like alien known as an "Independent Plant" and thus possesses great destructive powers, which he puts to much more devastating use than his brother.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Unlike Vash, he's perfectly fully willing to use it towards his goals.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Knives has incredibly simplistic motives and goals, ranging from ruining Vash's life and ideals for hurting him once to killing humans for using Plants in a system he forced them into in the first place.
• Razor Wings: In the manga, one of Knives' powers is part of his body turning into feathers which are monomolecular blades.
• Sanity Slippage: Notably, Knives didn't get this as a kid; he went immediately off the deep end after his traumatic revelation, but then acted like he'd blocked it out and was perfectly fine…right up until enacting "Plan Kill All Humans".
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • He took an Angel-Arm blast to the face during the Lost July incident and has spent the two decades since then screwed into a Plant-casing slowly recuperating. The moment he's up and about, things turn very bad very quickly.
  • In the anime, his first action upon release is to vaporize Chapel For the Evulz. In the manga, the first thing he does is shatter Legato's spine, and then he proceeds to force Vash to blow up the Fifth Moon.
• Self-Made Orphan: He is responsible for the Great Fall, which also directly kills Rem, the closest thing he had to a mother.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: To Vash in the manga, multiple times, with some "The Reason You Suck" Speech thrown into the mix.
• Slouch of Villainy: Manga Knives, generally with a hand over his eyes of forehead to show he's Full of Upset.
• Smug Snake: In the anime, where he comes off a lot more stable, yet his philosophical position is less well-supported.
• Spared by the Adaptation: He's still alive, though unconscious, at the end of the anime.
• The Sociopath: He's a conventional psychopath in the anime who relishes in making his brother suffer. While he's just as unhinged and misanthropic in the manga, he's also less hammy and sadistic and much more obviously addled by mental illness. He also still loves his brother deep down and is very reluctant to kill him.
• Stepford Smiler: When young, he hid his homicidal urges from Vash and Rem very well.
• Straw Nihilist: A variation, as he thinks everyone except him and his brother should kill themselves.
• Suicide by Cop: After his master plan in the manga falls through, he tries to goad Vash into doing this to him so that if he has to die, he can do so both on his feet whilst spitting on his brother’s ideals one last time. :As he’s lost most of his abilities by this point, Vash easily subdues him in seconds.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: All over the place on the SEEDS ship. First there was the whole speech about butterflies and spiders^note Saving the butterfly will deprive the spider of food, and eventually cause the spider to starve, so just kill all spiders so the butterflies will always be safe with obvious implications of what he thought of humanity. Then there's the whole situation with Mary. He's the one who suggests to Mary and Rowan, two of the ship's crew members, to falsely accuse the lecherous drunk Steve of rape to get him cryogenically frozen until he can be put on trial when they arrive at the new world they're heading for. From a boy who looks 10 but is only actually less than a year old.
• The Unfettered: To Vash's extremely Fettered. He will do anything to ensure his vision of a new Eden, even if that means exterminating mankind.
• Unskilled, but Strong: In the manga, he's entirely dependent on the raw power his Plant abilities give him. It ensures he's unstoppable most of the time, but the moment he's left unable to use them, he's quickly beaten due to lacking anything in the way of conventional defensive techniques.
• Unstoppable Rage: The unproductive kind, for the most part. Tends to destroy everything within range even if that includes people who were fairly integral to his plots.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In the manga, he was a genuinely kind, optimistic kid until he saw something terrible and couldn't cope.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Knives actually agrees with Rem's goal of creating a new Eden. However, his idea of Eden is one where the entire human race has been slaughtered.
• Villain Has a Point: His Humans Are Bastards mentality has more weight in the manga where the more successful SEEDS colonies on other worlds wound up going to war with one another anyway before becoming a not-at-all nice Galactic Superpower in the form of the Earth Federation.
• Villains Out Shopping: Seen hanging around naked in a tube and drinking A Glass of Chianti in an oasis in the anime, and playing the organ in bondage gear in his base and hanging around with a depressed/psychotic expression in the manga. Knives might be the laziest, most idle Big Bad around, which is bound to make us think he'd be less messed-up if he had a hobby or something.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Also possesses an Angel Arm. In the anime it's identical to Vash's, but in the manga it takes the form of a massive scythe.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As a child, his motives and goals are fairly similar to Vash's in that both desire protection and survival for the people they care about — it's their methods that provide such a stark contrast. Knives seems to have lost track of their similarities pretty early, and by the time the main story starts cannot be relied upon to adhere to any goal other than rage and revenge.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Knives actually has a shot at qualifying as this in the manga, at least during the flashback. During the main storyline, he's a Jerkass extraordinaire with a dash of "The Dark Side Will Make You Forget", but the story of Tesla would put anyone off the human race, especially a cute little kid who just wanted to be accepted...

Gung-Ho Guns

A group of thirteen ultra-powerful mercenary assassins (two of whom share the same body) hired by Legato on Knives's orders to cause Vash as much pain and suffering as possible.

Each Gung-Ho Gun is given a designated number (and, in the manga, a coin half to give to Vash if they're defeated), but their numbers often inexplicably differ between the manga and anime. Also note that a few members only appear in one version or the other.

The Group as a Whole

• Ax-Crazy: Most of them are mercenaries or Serial Killers hired by Legato and Knives.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Most of them commit suicide when defeated instead of having to face Knives and/or especially Legato for their failure.
• Carnival of Killers: Are all killers, but with different methods.
• Cyborg: Some of them, as part of the above.
• Deal with the Devil: They are said to have given up their humanity in exchange for strength. This is metaphorical, but their choice to work with Knives while knowing his goals is much more literal.
• Humanoid Abomination: Those that aren't mostly human, anyway.
• The Magnificent: Each of them has a title, usually referring to their abilities. E.G. Mine is the only one which does not fall into this form. In Gratuitous English, no less.
• Psycho for Hire: All of them. Some (notably E.G. Mine) talk openly about how they expect to be paid handsomely for their work.
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad: To Knives.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits:
  • In the anime, they have a Cyborg, cripple, a sniper, a saxophone player, a one-eyed lady, a samurai, a kid, a priest, a puppet master, a man with a strange spike-shooting weapon tied by strings to his body, and a Venom Expy in the group.
  • It's even more bizarre in the manga. The cyborg is actually a Collective Identity for a group of midgets, the kid is a Hive Mind for a species for highly intelligent worms, and there's also a man with a Split Personality, a man in a wheelchair, and a transvestite.
• The Stoic: Several of them rarely speak. (in the anime, two of them never speak)
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Exaggerated. By Knives' command, they are going to make Vash suffer by killing everybody on the planet and forcing Vash to kill them in turn.
• The Unfought: Gazelle the Peacemaker is an action figure of a Gung-Ho, who never appeared either in the manga or the anime.

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Monev the Gale

Voiced by: Masuo Amada (1998), Chikahiro Kobayashi (Stampede) (JP), Peter Spellos (EN), Ray Hurd (EN, Stampede)^{Foreign VAs}Eduardo Fonseca (Latin America, series), Angelo Nicotra (Italian)

The first Gung-Ho-Gun. The only thing known about him was that he was locked away and trained solely for purpose of killing Vash.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Begs for his life after slaughtering an entire town and subsequently getting beaten by Vash. Unusually for this series, it works.
• BFG: Wields two types, a chain gun he wears around his wrist and back and a rocket launcher after he loses that.
• Dirty Coward: He thinks nothing of murdering a town full of innocent people, yet begs for mercy once Vash comes out on top in their fight.
• Expy: Of Venom, his design strongly resembles him. Heck even his name is Venom spelled backwards. Most likely this was a homage as Nightow is well-known to be a huge fan of American superhero comic books.
• Eye Scream. In the manga, Vash shoves his gun into Monev's right eye socket so hard that it looks like his eye ruptures.
• Gatling Good: Dual wrist-mounted chain guns powered by large pressure chambers on the back of his power armor. Good thing he has the muscles for all that weight.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Was raised from childhood in near total isolation, forced to do nothing except physical training and target shooting. His attack on Vash is his first real experience with the outside world, and it shows, from his utter and complete disregard for human life or collateral damage in the ensuing battle (in the anime, he seems to completely ignore the presence of anyone except Vash), to his blubbering breakdown when Vash finally overpowers him.
• Mask Power: He's a hulking and powerful hitman wearing an orange see-through visor that covers most of his head and makes him look scarier.
• More Dakka: This is his M.O., which (ironically for this series) stands out in contrast to most of the other Gung-Ho Guns, who tend to prefer more bizarre techniques.
• '90s Anti-Hero: He looks like one (even though he is a villain) – Disproportionately huge muscles, bright colors, massively impractical guns, grimacing like a loon all the time… Rob Liefield would have a hard time coming up with anything crazier.
• Oh, Crap!: His expression after seeing Vash's Glowing Eyes of Doom.
• You Have Failed Me: Winds up killed for his failure. Most likely from Legato.

Dominique the Cyclops

"You're naïve. Had I been so inclined, I could have killed you three times already."

Voiced by: Yoko Soumi (JP), Carol Stanzione (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Karla Vega (Latin America, series), Pinella Dragani (Italian)

The second/third Gung-Ho-Gun.^note  Second in the anime, third in the manga. Tries her luck against Vash but he finds out her powers and easily beats her. Her fate is different depending on the media. In the anime, Legato finds and kills her off-screen. In the manga, she commits suicide by falling off a cliff.

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• Badass Longcoat: Wears one
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In the manga.
• Bifauxnen: Before Vash confirmed she had an ample bust, her gender was somewhat ambigious. She has a body type similar to Milly's (albeit less stocky) that she hides behind her oversized longcoat.
• Dark Action Girl: One of the only two female Gung-Ho Guns and a far more effective enemy than Monev against Vash.
• Eyepatch of Power: To hide her special eye's powers.
• Hellish Pupils: In the manga, her special eye is reptilian in design.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Her Demon's Eye actually hypnotizes her opponent to make her movements imperceptible. It affects all five senses, even if her opponent's eyes are closed, but Vash ultimately figures out that he can distract himself with pain to resist the hypnosis.
• Lightning Bruiser: Pretends to be this, able to pretty much Flash Step behind her opponent, but she actually temporarly freezes his opponents' senses for a few seconds.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her main power is her right eye, which is red colored in the anime but reptilian-like in the manga.
• Self-Disposing Villain: In the manga.
• The Smurfette Principle: In the anime, she is the only female Gung-Ho Gun.
• Teleport Spam: What Vash assumes her power must be after watching her in action.
• Two Girls to a Team: In the manga, she and Elendira are the only female Gung-Ho Guns.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She relies heavily on her eye's powers and is unable to dish anything out once that's been discovered.
• You Have Failed Me: In the anime, she's killed for her failure and strung up beside Monev.

E.G. Mine

Voiced by: Ryō Horikawa (1998), Wataru Takagi (Stampede) (JP)^{Foreign VAs}Héctor Miranda (Latin America, series), Giorgio Lopez (Italian)

"In this game, losers don't get to go home... They go to Hell!"

The second/fifth Gung-Ho Gun.^note  Second in the manga, fifth in the anime. A villain with two shells on either side of him that shoots out spikes.

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• Adaptational Badass: Actually manages to be a more of a threat in the anime, though not by much.
• Anime Hair: Has black spikey hair.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Vash beats him in one panel in the manga and both the former and Rai-Dei basically strip him of his weapons while the latter kills him.
• Diagonal Cut: With bullets, as Vash shoots him twice and a few minutes later his giant shields fall down, as those two bullets cut the belts holding them up.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: His method of murder includes shooting spikes at his opponents. In the anime, he's stabbed to death by Rai-Dei after he loses to Vash.
  • In the manga, it's never explicitly stated how he dies… but he is dead, likely at the hands of Knives' agents, as he is later tallied as one of the deceased Gung-Ho Guns.
• Improbable Weapon User: He uses two shields that shoot spike projectiles held together by string connect to his fingers. Unlike most examples, this is actually crippling as he has no other way of defending if they get into his range.
• Mask of Power: Does not help him against Vash at all.
• Meaningful Name: The only one without an awesome nickname and is thus defeated in the shortest amount of time, at least in the manga.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the manga, after Vash bonks him on the head, the focus immediately switches to Vash and Legato. E.G. never appears again. Though at least his name is given whenever someone tallies the dead Gung-Ho Guns, so it wasn't like he was completely forgotten.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Especially in the anime, he has a high opinion of himself and thinks he's on par with the rest of the members, but in reality, he relies heavily on his spike projectiles to kill enemies and seems to be the only reason why he was even considered a member.
• Spikes of Villainy: Has them as a weapon, with the manga version being even spikier.
• Weak, but Skilled: His spike projectiles are effective against a group of thug, but when faced with a man who can throw pebbles to deflect fatal bullets and has the speed to match those skills; He is obviously outmatched.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Especially with the manga adaptation, which had elaborated on almost all the members' pasts.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Rai Dei does this to him once he proves to not be up to the task of taking Vash on, and it is highly implied Knives also does this through his agents as he's tallied among the dead members.

Zazie the Beast

Unusually for this series, the characterization for Zazie is completely different between the manga and the anime – literally the only thing the two versions have in common is the ability to control insects. As a result, both are listed separately.

Zazie the Beast (anime)

Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya (1998), TARAKO (Stampede) (JP), Derek Stephen Prince (1998), Madeleine Morris (Stampede) (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Fabrizio Manfredi (Italian)

The fourth Gung-Ho-Gun. A child with the power to control sandworms with a device on his head.

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• The Beastmaster: At least, to insects.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Controls giant bugs through a device in his head.
• Demonic Possession: Zazie in this version thinks so, Vash has another theory in mind
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Wolfwood kills him before he could do anything.
• Evil All Along: He's partially responsible for why his friends' parents have been forced away by Legato's powers as well as trying to kill the villagers in order to piss off Vash.
• Guns Akimbo: Has the single most normal weapon arsenal of the Gung-Ho guns, and is a terrible shot.
• Hellish Pupils: Has purple slits once revealed to be evil.
• Hidden Depths: Vash notices that he was crying before the insect attack, which caused Zazie to lose his cool.
• Killed Off for Real: Like most of the Gung-Ho Guns.
• Our Demons Are Different: He has to control insects with a device on his head and possesses a child while submissive to Legato and by that extension, Knives.
• Shrinking Violet: Pretends to be this.
• Tyke Bomb: Vash strongly thinks he is this.
• Vocal Dissonance: Sounds much older than your average kid, and is possibly "possessed".
• We Hardly Knew Ye: We don't get much on his character and Wolfwood guns him down just as Vash was starting to get through to him, especially as to how he possessed the kid or how the kid came to think that way as well as how he came to have a device that controls insects. According to Word of God, however, it may the demon that possesses him that might be speaking through it.
• The Worm That Walks: While not directly stated, it is implied that the alien centipedes have taken over the boy's mind and possessing him to do his dirty work.

Zazie the Beast (manga)

The sixth Gung-ho Gun.

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• Body Surf: After the little boy host dies, Zazie possesses a girl, then returns as a man after the girl dies.
• Creepy Child: Originally this in his first host.
• Dark Action Girl: Briefly... it's complicated.
• Deadpan Snarker: When Zazie kidnaps Meryl to use as bait to lure out Vash, she makes a weird face in an attempt to look cute. Zazie just stares at her and asks, "Is that look supposed to be amazed, sick, or cute?"
• Deal with the Devil: He does this with Knives in order to see whether they would better coexist with him or humans. Once he proves dangerous, they turn on him, only to be killed themselves.
• Demonic Possession: A much more passive one as it possesses humans that are the nearest by to communicate with.
• Double Agent: Played with. He's still working for Knives, but his first mission is to act as this since Hoppered and Midvalley aren't trusted.
• Heel–Face Turn: After realizing Knives is becoming too powerful and might end up wiping them out as well as the humans. It's brief, though, since he's quickly defeated and decides to give the final coin-half needed to Vash.
• Hellish Pupils: Particularly while in the little boy host.
• Hive Mind: Zazie is actually a group of insects that resided on Gunsmoke before the humans populated it. They're actually controlling people they take over to act on their behalf.
• Not Quite Human: You know something's up when you see those eyes of his.
• The Worm That Walks: Bizarre variant; Zazie is the collective mind of many literal worms in a hijacked human body.
• Pretty Butterflies: First respawn, appears in a cloud of pseudo-butterflies; possibly some kind of connection technique for the newly appropriated hub.
• Sole Survivor: Due to their nature as an insect hivemind, they are actually one of the only three Gung-Ho Guns to survive the events of the story.

Leonof the Puppetmaster

Voiced by: Kaneta Kimotsuki (JP), Milton James (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Eduardo Ménez (Latin America, series), Vittorio Stagni (Italian)

The fourth (manga) Gung-Ho-Gun. As his name suggests, his special ability is to create and control puppets via special marionette strings, up to dozens at a time. While most of his puppets are obvious, he is capable of making them look surprisingly lifelike if need be. He also has the ability to throw his voice, as well as distort it to sound however he wants. This gives Vash a hard time as he has to distinguish friend and foe.

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• Armor-Piercing Question: When Vash tells him of the people Leonof used to know as a kid, he freaks out, especially at the last name mentioned, implied to be his real name.
• The Chessmaster: Controls his People Puppets like chess pieces while he watches from a distance, controlling their every move.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the manga he falls to his death, while in the anime Wolfwood hunts him down and kills him in revenge for his attack on Sky City.
• Evil Old Folks: The oldest of the Gung-Ho Guns. This is true even in the manga, as the older looking member, Chapel, looks like he does due to overuse of his enhanced body.
• Freudian Excuse: See The Lost Lenore below for more details.
• Forgotten Childhood Friend: To Vash, in the manga.
• Kill It with Water: In the manga, Vash sets off a fire sprinkler system to stop Leonof this way. The water saturates the puppets, making them so heavy that he breaks his fingers when he pulls on the control wires.
• The Lost Lenore: In the manga, he's preserved the body of his dead love interest in a coffin next to the other puppets. It's implied that he started making puppets because he was lonely.
• Marionette Master: A given due to his specialty.
• People Puppets: Though he only pretends to use corpses.
• Self-Harm: In the manga, he tears a bloody gouge into his cheek when he becomes agitated during his fight with Vash.
• Speech Impediment: Leonof speaks in a very unusual cadence (which disappears when he talks through his puppets). In Japanese, this is expressed by random syllables being written in katakana, while the English translation renders it with a mix of upper/lowercase letters and different fonts. It looks a bit like this:
  "WheRe aRE YoU, VasH tHe StAmPEde? yOU've diSaPpEArED…"
• Spell My Name With An S: Leonof vs. Leonoff vs. Leonov. The former spelling is used in the manga.
• That Man Is Dead: Thinks himself as this, which when Vash reminds him of his past, he freaks out.
• Villainous Breakdown: He loses it once the Armor-Piercing Question comes up, he goes from wanting Break the Cutie to deciding to kill him.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The anime kills him off before we learn why he even joined the Gung-ho Guns in the first place.

Hoppered the Gauntlet

Voiced by: Keiichi Nanba (JP), Jonathan Fahn (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Gustavo Carrillo (Latin America, series), Roberto Chevalier (Italian)

The sixth Gung-Ho-Gun. A crippled being encased in a bullet like shell that he can use to spin toward his targets as well as a shield behind him which also has a gun.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: He was ostracized and abused for being a hunchback.
• Battle Tops: His shield serves as a spinning top. With the rockets installed into the flat end, he can use it as a massive bullet.
• Berserker Tears: When explaining how he hates Vash for what he did to July.
• The Brute: Like Gray in the anime, though he has a lot more to say.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Defeats Vash in the manga, something Knives and Legato never did. Although their second encounter goes very differently.
• Defiant to the End: In the anime, after being beaten and nearly electrocuted to death, he still tries one last attack which critically damages the engines of the flying station.
• Evil Cripple: He has an incredibly large hump for a back that prevents him from walking upright, he also participates in a plan to wipe out all of humanity. He's more malevolent in the anime adaptation.
• Evil Counterpart: To Vash the Stampede; unlike Knives, who is a superhuman of the same type as Vash, Hoppered flips Vash's style on its head. Vash carries a gun but refuses to kill, Hoppered is a giant living bullet; Vash has a prosthetic arm, Hoppered has no legs; both men are defined by a lost female loved one.
• Hannibal Lecture: Gives one to Vash to deconstruct his view as a saint.
• The Lost Lenore: His motive for joining the Gung-ho Guns in the manga. The girl in question died during the Lost July incident, for which he's blamed Vash ever since.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: His shield also doubles as a gun; it can fire bullets from its center.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the manga, he breaks through Vash's psychological barriers and forces him to remember his role in Lost July. This also awakens Vash's repressed powers which his later control over allows Vash to save the world.
• Redemption Equals Death: In the manga.
• Spell My Name With An S: Hopperd (anime) vs. Hoppered (manga).
• Villainous Friendship: With Midvalley in the manga. He clearly respects his partner's ability and even planned on ensuring he'd have a chance to escape from Legato's wrath. Sadly, Midvalley was gunned down in front of Hopperd by Legato and Hopperd failed to avenge him before dying himself.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Just like many of the later Gung-Ho Guns in the anime. Like with Leonof, the anime omits his backstory completely.

Gray the Ninelives

Voiced by: Kento Fujinuma (JP)

The seventh Gung-Ho-Gun: A huge hulking beast with many a weapon embedded inside him. What he actually is varies between manga and anime.

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• The Brute: Fits this more than Monev as he relies on brute force.
• Collective Identity: The reason behind his name in the manga as he is a group of midgets that control one bio-artificial body.
• Cranial Processing Unit: Averted in the anime. He's seemingly defeated when his upper body is destroyed, but reveals just before crashing the ship Vash and Wolfwood are on that his brain is actually in his crotch.
• Crazy-Prepared: Has a weapon conceled in his thigh in case he lost his upper body.
• Cyborg: In the anime, the only part of him left that isn't a robot is his brain.
• Determinator: Even as a brain or midget, he will not stop.
• Kevlard: In the anime, he takes a grenade by Wolfwood point blank and goes unscathed, but after he loses his big masses of muscle courtesy of an acid bath, another grenade is enough to rip him apart.
• Humanoid Abomination: In the manga, he's actually a hideous bio-clone controlled by a group of midgets.
• Leg Cannon: Has a rocket launcher in its thigh that it uses to destroy its target after its upper half is destroyed.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: This is what his title refers to, though the actual reason differs from manga to anime.
• Silent Bob: Doesn't say a word in the anime.
• Super-Strength: Due to being a nigh invincible machine.
• The Un-Smile: In the anime, since he has no mouth.
• The Voiceless: In the anime since he's a machine.
  • Averted in the manga when he curses Wolfwood for betraying them and then again when his Collective Identity is revealed.

Caine the Longshot

The eighth Gung-Ho-Gun. Only appears in the anime (replacing Livio and Razlo).

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• Better to Die than Be Killed: When Vash corners him, rather than face Knives's punishment for his defeat, he shoots himself in the head.
• BFG: Has a hundred-foot-long sniper rifle, likely due to Rule of Cool.
• Chameleon Camouflage: His cloak can change into the color of the sand, which makes it more difficult to spot him. Weirdly enough, his large weapon is still well visible after using the technique, so its usefulness is rather relative.
• Cold Sniper: Practically the embodiment of this trope.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He can hit targets from absurd distances, but if his target can actually reach him he's pretty much defenseless other than a single pistol which he opts to use on himself instead.
• Expy: His design makes him look like a bizarre mix of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Barely puts a fight technically speaking: as soon as he is tracked down by Vash, he takes his own life.
• Silent Bob: Doesn't utter a word of dialogue.
• Sniper Rifle: It is absurdly long, allowing him to shoot targets from incredible distances.

Rai-Dei the Blade

Voiced by: Akio Ōtsuka (JP), Kirk Thornton (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Carlos del Campo (Latin America, series), Michele Gammino (Italian)

The ninth Gung-Ho-Gun. A warrior who's adapted the way of the samurai... with a few adjustments.

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• Ascended Extra: He got his own spin-off manga.
• Blood Knight: He claims he's more than willing to walk the path of the Ashura to reach his goals. For the profane, that would be, carnage, and lots of it.
• Born in the Wrong Century: He'd fit into Rurouni Kenshin with his abilities, but unfortunately he lives in the westernized world of Trigun; no one in this series has such honour. Turns out, neither does he.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In the Multiple Bullets Anthology, he was a vicious warrior that ended up with a nice life in a small town, but everyone gets killed by a gang, even his student, he swears off this mundane life and becomes the mercenary we know in the manga
• Death Seeker: He tells Vash that his one desire is to experience the void between life and death. Vash warns him there's nothing to see there but fear. And is proven right.
• Freudian Excuse: In his spin off, he was going to settle down with an apprentice and potential Love Interest, but then some organ rustlers decide to kill everyone including the two mentioned, so he kills them and becomes the evil that he is today
• Gratuitous Japanese: He challenges Vash by showing him a traditional challenge letter with "Duel To Death" written down in kanji. Lampshaded when Vash, who can't read kanji, asks him what's written on it.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Though it can become a shotgun when needed.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: A katana who not only can become a shotgun, but can also fire its blade.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Rai-Dei is a Cowboy Samurai Assassin on Steampunk Rocket Skates! In space!
• Razor Wind: In the anime, he can apparently send shockwaves with his sword.
• Rollerblade Good: Manga only, uses some rocket-powered skates to be a Lightning Bruiser.
• Samurai: The only one in the entire series.
• Slasher Smile: As a child in the manga.
• Villainous Breakdown: He appears calm and collected, willing to seek the abyss between life and death, but when Vash unleashes his Angel Arm, Rai-Dei goes from surprised to stunned to be downright terrified of what he's witnessing.
• You Have Failed Me: Apparently delegated to Wolfwood in the anime. Manga Wolfwood takes him out for his own reasons. Plus orders.

Chapel the Evergreen

Chapel the Evergreen (anime)

Voiced by: Hirotaka Suzuoki (JP), Dan Woren (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Francisco Zambrano (Latin America, series), Enrico Pallini (Italian)

The tenth Gung-Ho-Gun, Nicholas's Evil Mentor, but unlike Master C, he genuinely cares about him. An anime-only character. He was significantly re-written in the manga.

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• Bald of Evil: More of a Punch-Clock Villain if anything.
• BFG: Holds one similar to Wolfwood, that can split into two separate ones.
• Church Militant: Unlike the example below, he is bit more lenient.
• Cross Attack: Having given Nicholas his weapon, Chapel wields his own Cross Punisher that splits into two machineguns.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He can briefly be seen twice in episode 10 of the anime, first listening to the organizer of the quick-draw tournament, and later observing the aftermath of the competitors' attempts to capture Vash. Only his shadow and ankles are visible in these two scenes, respectively; he doesn't show up in the flesh until the end of episode 22.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It becomes clear that after he "killed" Wolfwood, he became enraged once Legato dismisses Wolfwood as trash, and tries to kill him.
• Evil Mentor: But is much more benign about it.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Knives has him obliterated for defying him in the act of trying to avenge Wolfwood.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Subverted in that he actually cares for Wolfwood enough to attempt to kill Legato to avenge him.
• Guns Akimbo: Has a cross gun similar to Wolfwood's that can split into two machine guns. Justified as he is the one who raised him to use the Punisher.
• Hidden Depths: He has Wolfwood try and take his apple away even as an adult like a father teasing his son.
• Trademark Favourite Food: Green apples, apparently. He even tests Wolfwood's skills by having him try to grab apples from his hand.
• Like a Son to Me: Unlike the manga example below, it is strongly implied that he cared for Wolfwood as his son and goes to shoot Legato for insulting him.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Knives has him killed after he tries to take down Legato for forcing him to kill his student.

Chapel/Master C (manga)

The leader of the Eye of Michael, an order of assassins who worship the Plants and Knives as gods.

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• Bait-and-Switch Boss: He's NOT "Trip of Death".
  • He and Livio are also this to another duo who look to follow the Gung-Ho theme, but show up to quickly kill them off.
• Church Militant: Unlike Evergreen, he is truly evil.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He can't get why Wolfwood became so hesitant to kill people. So much so that he openly weeps when he sees Wolfwood acting with cold deficiency in order to avoid killing his opponents.
• Evil Mentor: To Wolfwood, but is much more of an ass about it.
• Evil Old Folks: Subverted, in that his appearance is a result of an overuse of an altered body, but is still much older than the rest of the main cast, with the obvious exceptions of Vash and Knives.
• Handicapped Badass: Confined to a wheelchair, but that's nothing; he can still shoot off his BFGs like a pro.
• Healing Factor: As a part of his enhanced body and the reason he looks so old.
• Humans Are Bastards: Believes this zealously like Knives does.
• Jerkass: He's this to everyone except Knives to which he views as a god.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He spared Livio's life to raise him, not because he was doing something selfless, it's because he wanted to use him as a weapon.
  • He even shoots off his own legs to get Livio to be incredibly loyal to him.
• Karmic Death: Tries to kill Livio once he proves useless, Razlo kills him in blind fury.
• Knight Templar: To Knives' goals and his organisation's methods.
• Lack of Empathy: Once Razlo/Livio proves useless, he tries to kill him.
  • He also tries to have Wolfwood's orphanage destroyed in order for him to lose emotional ties.
• Last Breath Bullet: Even after Wolfwood breaks his neck, Chapel manages to fire one last shot.
• The Magnificent: The only subversion in the Guns. He is simply known as Chapel, when Wolfwood steals his identity, everyone simply calls Chapel 'old man'.
• The Unfettered: He'll do anything to make sure his students remain killers.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: To Livio, but it backfired epically.
• Younger Than They Look: His current appearance can be attributed to his overuse of his altered body.

Midvalley the Hornfreak

Voiced by: Tomohiro Nishimura (JP), Steve Bulen (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Eduardo Menez (Latin America, series), Danilo Di Martino (Italian)

The eleventh Gung-Ho-Gun, and the one who appears to be closest to Legato.

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• Always Someone Better: His initial assault on Vash is completely one-sided. Vash even states that Midvalley could have easily killed him many times. Fortunately for Vash, Midvalley was expressly ordered to toy with Vash and make him suffer for as long as possible, which gives Vash just enough time to figure out how to disable his weapon.
• Anti-Villain: Trigun Maximum makes it clear that he is a bad person who still holds onto his humanity.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Knowing he won't be allowed to live for failing to kill Vash, he instead opts to take his own life; he deliberately opens fire with his damaged saxophone gun, causing it to blow apart and kill him instantly.
• The Dragon: To Legato, in the anime. In the manga, he's almost a Starscream.
• Dragon with an Agenda: In the manga only works for Knives because he was coerced into it.
• Evil Duo: Is sent to battle Vash alongside Hoppered.
• Improbable Weapon User: A saxophone modified as a gun. In the manga, it's just a saxophone.
• Instrument of Murder: A saxophone that can create shock-waves when blown.
• Mad Artist: More in the anime than in the manga.
• Musical Assassin: He kills with a modified saxophone gun.
• Psycho for Hire: He was always a musician who killed with his music, which got Knives's attention. However, it turns out that wasn't something he wanted and tried to escape the Gung-ho Guns due to this.
• The Starscream: In the manga, he's much less loyal to Legato and his cause, since the Gung-Ho Guns don't take kindly to job resignations, he ends up killed.
• Villainous Friendship: With Hoppered in the manga.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: In anime Ep.24, he kills himself on Legato's orders the second his fight with Vash turns against him. He sticks around much longer in the manga.

Elendira the Crimson-Nail

Voiced by: Ayumu Murase (JP)

The secret thirteenth Gung-Ho-Gun and the strongest among its ranks. Only appears in the manga. She is a trans woman who has served Knives since childhood.

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• Abnormal Ammo: Unlike most others, Elendira uses giant screws and nails over using a gun.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Biologically male, but seems to prefer being referred to with female pronouns. ^note  Japanese does not have sex-delineated 3rd-person pronouns the way English does; instead, men and women are expected to use different speech particles. In the original, Elendira speaks in a very feminine manner. A scene where Wolfwood calls her a man but then pauses and corrects himself by calling her a woman suggests that she's a trans woman.
• Battle Butler: To Knives.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During her most intense fight and even as she lay dying, impaled on her own nail, her makeup stays perfect.
• Boomerang Bigot: It's never explained why, but she fully supports Knives's misanthropic ambitions despite being human herself. She's even willing to activate a nuclear warhead in the event of Knives's defeat.
• Co-Dragons: She and Legato are Knives' closest lieutenants. Having to share this role angers them both.
• Dark Action Girl: A trans woman that's one of the strongest characters in the manga.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has a very sarcastic sense of humor, in contrast to most other characters.
• Death from Above: In the form of giant nails shot down from Elendira's air transport.
• The Dreaded: Wolfwood freaks out when he realizes who she is. She very quickly proves why that fear is justified.
• Expy: Has the same hat, blond hair and briefcase as Maetel. Elendira even cosplays Maetel on one of the gag covers to drive it home further.
• Fragile Speedster: Thank God, considering all the effort it took Livio to land that one hit.
• Horrifying the Horror: Even the Ax-Crazy Razlo becomes fearful of her when she activates her Mind Rape ability.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Those nails look like they hurt. She also dies on one of them.
• Improbable Weapon User: She fires spikes from both her ship and a crossbow hidden in a large briefcase she carries. In actuality, those things are way too big to be thrown around.
• Killed Off for Real: Like all the Gung-Hos besides Livio, Razlo, and Zazie.
• Lightning Bruiser: Once she removes her Power Limiter, and proceeds to beat the crap out of her opponent.
• Mad Love: Not as much as Legato, but she is very much fixated on Knives.
• Mind Rape: She has the ability to make others think they're suffering incredibly gruesome deaths. Like so many things about her this is never explained.
• Power Limiter: Removes it during the battle against Livio.
• The Resenter: Toward Legato, for being favored by Knives. It's mutual.
• Sadist: Enjoys toying and mocking her enemies as she fights and takes great joy at the thought of Knives massacring a town.
• Improbable Weapon User: Her briefcase, which unfolds into a crossbow that shoots giant red nails.
  • Keep in mind that, in a world of guns, she fights with a briefcase full of red nails and is probably the deadliest thing on the planet (because Knives is lazy and Vash is a staunch pacifist).
• Two Girls to a Team: She's the only female Gung-Ho Gun other than Dominique.

Livio the Double Fang

Livio the Double Fang

Post Heel–Face Turn

Voiced by: Genki Muro (JP)

A childhood friend of Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a disciple of Chapel and a member of the Gung-Ho-Guns from the Eye of Michael. Livio has what is assumed is Dissociative Identity Disorder and an alter ego known as Razlo the Tri-Punisher of Death, who is treated as a separate member of the Gung-Ho Guns. After the death of Nicholas at his hands, he joins Vash in the final battle.

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• Action Genre Hero Guy: When he becomes a good guy, he shaves his head, looking like a pale version of this, however, after the events of the manga,he goes back to have a mane.
• Anti-Hero: Goes from one of the toughest villains of the setting, to a heroic character in the span of a few volumes, he has good reasons, too
• The Atoner: Post Heel Face Turn, as is obvious he feels guilty about the whole Wolfwood deal.
• Badass Preacher: As a member of the Eye of Michael, although he is a priest in name only.
• Badass Cape: Post Heel–Face Turn he has a nice black cape and hat.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: He isn't, but when Legato mentions "Double Fang" and "Trip of Death" arriving, we cut to two guys, one with two big tusks, and the other with the power to extremely expand his muscles. One would think these are them until the real McCoys make their entrance. Master C isn't the Trip of Death, Livio is, more specifically, his split personality, Razio
• Barbarian Long Hair: He has long white hair and is a force to reckon with, and also contrasts with the other Gung Ho's who have short hair, or are much more deformed.
• Beard of Sorrow: Due his guilt of Killing Nicholas.
• BFG: Wears a machine gun on each arm that can fire forwards and backwards.
• Characterization Marches On: Just the Final Battle, he goes from stoic with a psychotic side to a significantly more wisecracking side after talking to Vash for a short while.
• Childhood Friends: With Wolfwood. Despite been a short-lived bond, it impacted them both deeply.
• Cross Attack: His guns are shaped like crosses.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Combined with Et Tu, Brute? from Master C trying to kill him.
• The Dragon: To Master C.
• Dramatic Unmask: He wears a skull half-mask that covers the left side of his face. It falls off when the Razlo personality takes over.
• Facial Markings: Three lines connecting his eye with the device on its ear. He lacks the eyebrow above them.
• Good Costume Switch: Combined with Important Haircut, when he casts off the Eye of Michael and follows Vash.
• Guns Akimbo: Wields the Double Fang, two cross-shaped sub-machine guns capable of firing forwards and backwards. Using them both let's him fire in four directions *at once*.
• Healing Factor: Like most members of the Eye of Michael. Better formulated than Wolfwood's prototype version, as his healing kicks in automatically without the need to take a dose of Super Serum as Wolfwood does.
• Heel–Face Turn: After being defeated by Nicholas and the betrayal from Master C, he decides to team up with Vash
• Heroic Build: He's RIPPED.
• His Quirk Lives On: he carries Nicholas's Punisher at the end of the manga.
• Perma-Stubble: After his Heel–Face Turn.
• Post-Stress Overeating: Along with Vash after Wolfwood´s death. Despite the mixed emotions between them, it's a very wholesome moment.
• Red Herring: Twice. He kills two guys that seemed to be Gung-Ho Guns, but turned out to be assassins. Also he's both the Double Fang and Trip of Death.
  • Sharing a Body: Counts as this as well.
• Sole Survivor: He, Razlo, and Zazie are the only three Gung-Ho's to survive to the end of the manga.
• Split Personality: As a boy, he created the Razlo personality to deal with all the abuse he suffered. Both of them eventually become Gung-Ho Guns.
  • Split-Personality Merge: With Razlo after the fight with Elendira.
• The Stoic: At first, midway through his fight with Wolfwood he starts to become much more agressive, culminating with Razlo coming out.
• Superpowered Evil Side: When Livio goes up against Elendira, he's forced to use Razlo to win.
• Weak, but Skilled: Livio's Double Fang lacks the power of Wolfwood's Punisher, but makes up for with multi-directional shots and Livio's own speed. Livio initial lack of strength is why he is still second place to Razlo. He overcomes this by remembering that he and Razlo share a body, meaning he combines his skill with Razlo's raw power.

Trip Of Death

Razlo the Tri-Punisher of Death

The final member of the Gung-ho Guns introduced into the manga and a member of the Eye of Michael mentioned above. Actually Livio's psychotic Split Personality; much more violent, yet also more loyal to Chapel.

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• Ax-Crazy: One of the craziest of the already sociopathic Gung-ho Guns, so dangerous that The Eyes of Michael felt he was too dangerous to keep alive.
• The Berserker: Oh boy, if Livio was calm and collected, Razlo is the opposite but also much more dangerous.
• Delinquent Hair: He has a half mohawk in tandem with a facial tattoo of the Eye of Michael.
• Discard and Draw: Tosses Livio's guns aside for his own Punishers.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He does not take Master C's attempt to kill him very well.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being a complete lunatic, he almost always acts to protect Livio when he needs support and genuinely cared for Chapel.
• Facial Horror: He's missing an ear. He later gets his faced horribly demolished twice; once by Wolfwood and again later by Elendira. Neither result is pretty to look at, and it's only thanks to his super-healing that neither is permanent.
• Healing Factor: Being part of Livio's consciousness helps in his favor.
• Heel–Face Turn: After the fight with Nicholas, he merges again with Livio and both become good guys, as a way of Redemption Equals Life
• Hell-Bent for Leather: In contrast to Livio's Badass in a Nice Suit, he wears an entire leather getup with his chiseled chest exposed.
• More Dakka: Dual Wielding with a 50% bonus (see below).
• Multiarmed And Dangerous: Uses three Cross Punishers, with a cybernetic arm sprouting from his back to wield the third one. His robot arm also grabs bullets out the air.
• Pet the Dog: He's still rude and crass, but he is kind to Livio and Chapel.
• Red Herring: It's not Master C who's the Trip of Death, it's Razlo, Livio's second personality.
• Self-Made Orphan: Razlo's existence is thanks to parental abuse. The reason Livio was sent to the orphanage was revealed to be because Razlo stabbed his parents.
• Sole Survivor: He, Livio, and Zazie are the only three Gung-Ho's to survive to the end of the manga.
• Split Personality: Livio's, which manifested even before his joining the Eye of Michael. It's even implied Razlo was the one who brought them to the order.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Livio's, although he is more caring than most evil sides.
• Tattooed Crook: His face has a huge black tattoo and his Ax-Crazy behavior doesn't help.
• Walking Spoiler: Talking about Razlo is basically spoiling the entire fight between Nicholas and Livio
• Wild Hair: In contrast with Livio's Barbarian Long Hair and later short hair.
• White Hair, Black Heart: His white hair contrasts heavily with his black leather clothing
• Unskilled, but Strong: Lacks the finesse of the other Eyes of Michael, but Razlo's raw destructive power, healing ability and killer instinct make him one of the most powerful members of the cast. His natural ability is the key difference between him and Livio.

Minor Villains

Minor Villains

Descartes

Voiced by: Daisuke Gōri (JP), Joe Romersa (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Glauco Onorato (Italian)

Boss of a gang of bounty hunters that come after Vash in the first episode of the anime. He and Loose Ruth end up teaming up to capture Vash. He also later appears in the manga...

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• Bad Boss: He threatens to kill one of his subordinates and seriously injures another trying to take Vash out, knowing his gang member was in the line of fire.
• Battle Boomerang: His weapon of choice is a huge, bladed boomerang which he can charge using a retractable rope mechanism situated on his mechanical arm.
• Canon Immigrant: Was introduced in the anime first before making a minor appearance in the manga shortly thereafter, whereupon he's immediately killed by Grey without ever meeting the main cast.
• Character Death: Appears in the manga only to die a few panels later.
• Cyborg: He has an entirely mechanical arm with a mechanism for his boomerang and several screws embedded in his body.
• Fat Bastard: A man literally huge in both height and girth who is a selfish sadistic womanizer.
• Gonk: Massive, ugly and has a grotesque, rough face with elongated earlobes.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Vash jumps over his boomerang and then uses his own throwing belt and mechanism to painfully pull him in a hold. Gray the Ninelives kills him by impaling him with his own boomerang.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the manga, courtesy of Grey the Nine-Lives.
• Mistaken Identity: Since he wears red clothes, has blond spiky hair and wields a huge silver weapon, Loose Ruth mistakes him for Vash the Stampede.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In the anime, he and his group of bounty hunters have Meryl and Milly tied up, and Descartes appears to be about to rape them (not sure how that would work since he's so huge). Luckily for them, Vash shows up riding a thomas in to save the day... then starts screaming for his mommy when the bounty hunters start shooting at him.
• Starter Villain: In the anime, where he's the first antagonist Vash confronts. In the manga their confrontation (if it occurred at all) happens behind the scenes before the first chapter begins, though it presumably played out the same minus Meryl and Milly's appearance.
• Villain Team-Up: After a brief fight agaist Ruth, they end up joining forces to take down Vash.

Loose Ruth

Voiced by: Yukimasa Kishino (JP), Paul St. Peter (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Sandro Iovino (IT)

A bounty hunter that comes after Vash in the first episode of the anime. He teams up with Descartes to capture Vash.

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• Badass Longcoat: It's brown but has a red inner lining, which briefly leads Descartes to think Ruth is Vash The Stampede.
• Bald of Evil: Once his hat is knocked off, it turns out his blond hair doesn't extend much above his ears.
• BFG: Wields a unique rifle with twin barrels and twin bullet clips. Being a unique weapon, it also makes Descartes think he's actually Vash.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's surprisingly friendly for a heartless bounty hunter.
  "Mister Vash the Stampede, it's a privilege to meet you. Your face is starting to look like it belongs on the double dollar. You really can't blame me for coming after you, though, since your head is worth sixty billion of them."
• Mistaken Identity: He believes that Descartes is Vash the Stampede, but then Descartes points out that with his unique weapon and blond hair "Ruth" could easily be Vash himself, trying to pin the blame on someone else.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He is the one that suggests Descartes "enjoy" Meryl and Milly.
• The Stoic: At least until he gets blindsided by a giant boomerang.

Cliff Schezar

Voiced by: Masaaki Yajima (JP), John Snyder (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Giorgio Lopez (Italian)

A wealthy businessman who appears in the second episode of the anime, in charge of the water supply of a dried up town. He hires Vash to protect him and Marianne from an assassin, but it soon becomes clear that there is more to the story than he let on.

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• Captain Obvious: "Recently someone's been trying to kill me. That could be bad for business and my health."
• Faux Affably Evil: Acts like he hired Vash to protect Marianne because he cares about her well-being. When she finds out what he's really up to, he tries to kill her.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: Look at that Hitler-stache!
• Greed: Stated by Marianne to be the reason why he's monopolizing the water under his property.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: When Vash disarms him, he opens his jacket to reveal four more pistols mounted to his sides.
• Non-Standard Character Design: He's the shortest character in the series (even Meryl's taller) and has a cartoonishly big nose.

The Nebraska Family

A family of outlaws infamous for the amount of destruction they cause, consisting of their unnamed father, his wife Patricia, their sons Gofsef, Kanta, Tonkichi, and Chinpei, and their daughter Marilyn.

Voiced by: Kenichi Ogata (JP - Nebraska Father), Steve Blum (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Vittorio Stagni (Italian - Nebraska Father), Claudia Razzi (Italian - Patricia Nebraska)

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• Aerith and Bob: The women in the family are named Patricia and Marilyn, vs boys named Gofsef, Kanta, Tonkichi, and Chinpei. Since the dad is never named in the series it's unknown where he fits on the trope.
• Cyborg: One of the sons is a gigantic cyborg. So is the mother.
• Dumb Muscle: Possibly Gofsef, who does whatever his father tells him to do. Patricia is at least snarky with her daughter, Marilyn.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The one redeeming factor of this bizarre and maniacal family is that they actually do love each other. The father lets out a sincerely woeful "My baby!" when Gofsef is knocked out, and both Patricia and Marilyn are reduced to tears when one of the sons misses his mark and gets hurt.
• Gonk: Oh good lord. The family patriarch is a scrawny old man with three teeth left, and his wife and one of their sons are literal giants. The other three sons are built like the Juggernaut. At least their only daughter looks relatively normal.
• The Family That Slays Together: A whole family of hoodlum bounty hunters who are also wanted by the police.
• Hammy Herald: Both Dr. Nebraska for his son Gofsef and Marilyn for her little brothers and mother, since they're both the only one in the family who can talk.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Yeah, see above. A scrawny old fart standing 5'5" tall having kids with a woman standing 30+ft tall and looks like this. HOW?!
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: When Patricia cries when her thrown son gets hurt, one of the goons there comments that if she loves them that much she shouldn't use them as bullets.
• Mad Scientist: The father, who was presumably the one in charge of his giant offspring's aumentation.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: The voluptuous Marilyn is a lot easier on the eyes than her goblin-like father.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Both Gofsef and his mother make their debut threateningly stomping into view... only to topple a car which hit them on the shin, causing them to yell in pain. In the first case, Dr. Nebraska even angrily asks who left the car in the way.
• Talker and Doer: The father and Gofsef, and Marilyn and Patricia.
• Starter Villain: Dr. Nebraska and Gofsef in the manga; in the anime they're merely villains of the week.
• The Unintelligible: Gofsef and Patricia don't talk, emitting only feral, reverberating cries. Marilyn though can seemingly understand her mother just fine.
• Weaponized Offspring: The triplets wear armor which allows them to turn into human cannonballs their mother can throw at the enemy. Of course, they survive the impact and return to the base.

Brilliant Dynamites Neon

"Nothing shines like hard won fame."

Voiced by: Unshō Ishizuka (JP), Michael Gregory (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Nino Prester (Italian)

Leader of a band of outlaws called the Bad Lads. He runs into Vash during his gang's takeover of a sand steamer on route from Inepril City to May City.

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• BFG: The twin giant dynamos on his shoulders.
• Chewing the Scenery: He's very fond of this, in line with his ideology of wanting to do everything as flashy and bombastic as possible.
• Cutting the Knot: He seizes the sand steamer only to discover that the money is locked in a huge vault that nobody on board can access. His solution? Turn the engines to full speed and run the steamer off a cliff to crack the safe open.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Neon sticks to what he says and really likes it when someone "sparkles" brightly. He outright refuses to kill Vash despite pretty much winning a duel they had. He even helps stop the massacre he started because he agreed to do whatever Vash said if Vash won their duel.
• Fauxshadow: At the end of his duel with Vash he outright states they'll cross paths again, with the whole thing making blatantly clear he and Vash will have a rematch later on. Only they never do, as he only makes a brief cameo and never encounters Vash again for the rest of the series.
• Karma Houdini: Is never brought to justice for his murders, and is confirmed to still be alive in one of the last chapters.
• Knight of Cerebus: His arc begins the story's foray into longer arcs, and he manages to kill a civilian on Vash's watch, heralding the entrance of more dangerous villains capable of racking up onscreen bodycounts.
• Large and in Charge: Is nearly twice as tall as his minions.
• Noble Demon: Neon is not a nice man, but he challenges Vash to a one-on-one duel despite having a huge advantage in numbers, and even puts his own life on the line to save the sand steamer after conceding the duel.

Project SEEDS Crew

Note: Under construction. Please expand and contribute.

Rem Saverem

"No person ever has the right to take the life of another."

Voiced by: Aya Hisakawa (1998), Maaya Sakamoto (Stampede) (JP); Bridget Hoffman (1998), Emily Fajardo (Stampede) (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Mayte Supervía (Spain), Adriana Casas (Latin America), and Letizia Scifoni (Italian)

One of the maintenance staff on the main SEEDS ship. She takes Vash and Knives in as her own children when the crew finds them, and acts as their surrogate mother. She is extremely kind and idealistic, and Vash treats her lessons and worldviews as sacred. She is also, however, highly competent and has great resolve.

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• The Atoner: In the manga. She didn't fight hard enough to save Tessla, the first independent plant born on the voyage, who died Strapped to an Operating Table less than a year old, and all the devotion and secrecy in which she raised the boys was initially motivated by her determination to do better, given this second chance.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Subverted. In the manga, after Vash discoverss Tessla's horrific fate, he becomes depressed and when she brought a peach to cheer him up, he tried to end his life with the paring knife. She grabbed the blade with her bare hand to stop him, succeeding but badly hurting herself in the process.
• Black-and-White Morality: To a point; she enforces an universal view of never taking a life, which in the series's universe proves to be overtly simplistic, if not downright dangerous.
• Giver of Lame Names: Who names their foster-son Knives? Crazy ninjas, that's who! Pirates! Not pacifist astronauts conspiring to prevent the kid from being dissected by their coworkers! It's like she was asking for it.
• The Gwen Stacy: A non-romantic one to Vash.
• Heroic Sacrifice: On a greater scope than most. She forgoes saving herself in an escape pod to try and fix Knives's sabotage^* (it's never made clear whether she knew he did it, but one can infer she connected the dots as soon as she saw Joey's executed corpse), and her sacrifice prevents the total annihilation of the human race (or at least a big chunk of it in the manga), allowing some of the SEEDS ships to land on Gunsmoke.
• Hero's Muse: She inspired and guided Vash. She's the reason he never kills anyone, no matter how much they deserve it. She took Vash and Knives in as her own children when the crew found them, and acted as their surrogate mother. She is extremely kind and idealistic, and Vash treats her lessons and worldviews as sacred.
• Meaningful Name: Rem can be translated to English as "the world", depending on the context.
• The "Mom" Voice: Rem Saverem takes it upon herself to serve as a mother figure to Vash and Knives when they emerge from the Plant about the Project Seed ship. She tended to dote on Vash more, seeing him as the more naive and innocent of the pair, and thus more in need of looking after, sometimes gently teasing him for being a "baby". Vash frequently reflects on the things she used to tell him, with her Last Words to him, right before she leaves to perform a Heroic Sacrifice, to tell him, "Take care of Knives."
• Parental Substitute: To Vash and Knives. Although given what they are, they don't really have parents.
• Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: When Rem makes her Heroic Sacrifice, she yells something to Vash that is cut off by the blast doors closing. Vash still takes this "something" as gospel even over a century later. The reader/viewer never learns what she says. ^note  The English and Spanish dubs have her say "Take care of Knives!", but in Japanese the verb is missing; we only hear "Knives wo…". The manga cuts it off after she says "Vash…"
• Posthumous Character: She died over a hundred years before the start of the story.
• Spell My Name With An S: Rem's last name – "Saverem" (anime) vs. "Seibrem" (manga)
  • Some countries (not Japan or the USA) spell her first name as "Lem".
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: She is resolutely against murder and teaches Vash to save everyone, even his enemies who are trying to kill other people. It's an admirable ideal but very hard to put into practice. Because of this, Vash puts off resolving the Knives problem for a long time because he's looking for a solution that doesn't involve killing his Ax-Crazy brother.

Bill Conrad

William Conrad/ Count Revnant Vasquez

"Knives... please forgive us humans..."

Voiced by: Ryūsei Nakao (JP)

Manga-exclusive character. One of the scientists on the SEEDS ship who discovers Knives and Vash when accidentally woken up from cold sleep. He agrees to keep their existence a secret after talking with Rem. After the Great Fall he used his knowledge of Plants to become wealthy and live a comfortable life in July. Vash goes looking for him. Knives finds him first, and makes plenty of use of Conrad's knowledge.

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• The Atoner: Agrees to serve Knives out of his own guilt for the cruel experiments he performed on Tesla.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: His appearance is a near dead ringer for Patrick Stewart.
• Humans Are Bastards: He might even be more aware of that fact than Knives. He tries to lead Knives away before the latter can witness the Last Run, when an aging plant is drained of all remaining power to cause a horrific death.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When Knives learns of the limited powers of Plants and the black hair that signals eventual death, and how Vash is even further gone than he is.
• The Mole: Ultimately betrays Knives by tricking him into using his power carelessly, causing his hair to turn black. Unfortunately, it only makes Knives get that much more serious about wiping out humanity.

Joey

Voiced by: Jurota Kosugi (JP), Barry Stigler (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Saverio Indro (Italian)

The captain of the Project SEEDS lead ship, Rem's confidante, and something of a father surrogate.

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• Armour-Piercing Question: Cuts right to the heart of the matter in the manga when little Vash and Knives are shyly meeting their second human ever — "Do you love Rem?" (Knives nods shyly. Joey smiles) "Then it's fine."
• Boom, Headshot!: In the anime, Knives takes him out right between the eyes.
• Only Sane Man: Is one of the few crew members who isn't unhinged.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the anime, he starts to show shades of this after he kills Rowan, which sets Knives off to shoot him.
• Shoot the Dog: Kills Rowan to save Rem, and feels horrible about it afterwards.

Steve

Voiced By: Kyousei Tsukui (JP), Robert Buchholz (EN)

An anime-only SEEDS crew member. A foul-tempered drunk and speciesist (he hates Plants).

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• The Alcoholic: Can be inferred, as every time we see him onscreen, he's drunk.
• Asshole Victim: Knives sets up his death.
• Bait the Dog: He seems like the fun Boisterous Bruiser at first, but then he brings up on how Vash and Knives are "monsters" and beats up on the former while driving the latter to insanity.
• Bullying a Dragon: He both beats and verbally abuses a being that has far more intelligence than him and that possess unknown powers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the anime, he's pretty much the sole catalyst for Knives's descent into madness — if he wasn't such a Knight Templar, Knives would never have become so scared of humans.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He abuses Vash and Knives under the belief that they are "monsters" because they aren't human. The abuse causes Knives to effectively become a monster.

Rowan

Voiced By: Shigeru Nakahara (JP), Richard Miro (EN)

^{Foreign VAs}Antonio Sanna (Italian)

Another crewmember, a man with an unhealthy attraction towards Mary.

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• Ax-Crazy: Kills two members of the SEEDS crew, one of them his love interest.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Appears to be a normal person at first, but reveals himself to be the above trope after things start going downhill.
• Canon Immigrant: An anime-only character.
• If I Can't Have You…: To Mary.
• Love Makes You Crazy: He loved Mary but believed (incorrectly) that Steve's advances on her were working.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Basically what happened with Steve.
• Not Good with Rejection: Apparently not, since Mary rejected him and he shot her for it.
• Slasher Smile: While pointing a gun at Knives.
• Spell My Name With An S: Rowan.
• Yandere: A rare male example.

Mary

Voiced by: Maya Okamoto, Gracie Poietti (EN) (JP)^{Foreign VAs}Rossella Acerbo (Italian)

Project SEEDS's only known female crewmember aside from Rem.

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• Canon Immigrant: An anime-only character.
• Killed Offscreen: By Rowan.
• Love Triangle: Steve and Rowan both seem to have feelings for her.
• The Tease: Not overtly, but she does say about Steve and Rowan, "I guess if there was only one, it would be boring."
• Two Girls to a Team: She and Rem are the only two females on the SEEDS crew in the anime.

Other Plants

Chronica

A manga-only character, Chronica is an independent Plant, just like Vash and Knives. She serves aboard an Earth-based fleet that is finally responding to the transmissions coming from Gunsmoke (i.e. No Man's Land).

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• Big Damn Heroes: She and the rest of the fleet only show up at the bitter end, when Knives is about to finish the rest of humanity.
• Not So Stoic: Once her ship crashes. As Vash runs off with Knives at the end of their battle, she attempts a desperation attack on them, but is stopped by Livio.
• Restraining Bolt: Like other Earth Federation Plants, she has one of these, though as a beneficial side effect of not making her too powerful to threaten humanity, it prevents her from lethally burning herself out like independent Plants such as Knives and Vash can.
• The Stoic: Even in the face of Domina's fusing, she never loses her calm demeanor.
• Superweapon Surprise: Despite their desire to swoop in and save humanity, Chronica immediately employs their most powerful weapon, the "Tall Hammer", against Knives. Of course, it doesn't work, but it does buy Vash some time.

Domina

A manga-only character, Domina is Chronica's subordinate, and also a Plant.

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• Red Shirt: Gets absorbed into Knives, seemingly to prove how powerful he is.
• The Watson: To Chronica.

Tessla

Tessla

Only appearing in a flashback in the manga, Tessla was the first known Plant able to live independent of her casing. She was discovered on one of the SEEDS ships and taken in by the crew. Once she was about a year old – physically appearing about 10 – the crew scientists (over Rem's tepid objections) performed multiple highly invasive experiments on her. The stress of it caused her body to rapidly deteriorate until she died. After that, her body parts were kept in jars on the main ship… to be discovered by Vash and Knives, who were born a couple years later. This became a great source of trauma for both of them, especially Knives who never figured out how to cope.

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• Artificial Human: She was a Plant, like Vash and Knives after her. That means she was created by man to at least some extent, though it's never exactly clear just what a Plant is.
• Body Horror: Oh, big time. The internal report collated after her death talks about some of the prodding the scientists did to her… and into gruesome detail about how her body literally fell apart as a result.
• For Science!: The explicit reason the SEEDS crew performed all their experiments. By the time they realized what a toll it was taking on her body, it was too late.
• Humans Are Bastards: She did not appear to think so, but the discovery of what was done to her cements this idea into Knives's head; he cannot cope with learning the truth and decides mankind as a species is at fault.
• Playing with Syringes: Her cause of death.
• Posthumous Character: Even during the flashback she's been dead for over a year.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The horrific dehumanizing experiments the SEEDS crew performed on her since birth and the dissection they'd perform even after death would deeply traumatize the twins. Her death serves as Knives's Cynicism Catalyst, kickstarting the entire plot.
• Spell My Name With An S: "Tessla" or "Tesla"?
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Always shown sporting this, combined with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness when you take into account what she has to endure.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Questions of ethics, probably posed by Rem, went ignored. Rem's inability to save her caused her to become The Atoner.

Sky City Citizens

These are the people who live in the uncrashed SEEDS Ship that Vash considers the closest thing he has to a home. They have preserved much of the Lost Technology that either disappeared or broke down with No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup down on the planet's surface. Their occasional forays to the ground have given them a healthy distrust of outsiders.

Sensei

Sensei

Sensei is the 80+ year old leader of Sky City's people. As a child, he was part of the original group who found a half-dead Vash and took him in.

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• Miniature Senior Citizens: He's shorter than even most of the children.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the anime, he's still around once the story moves back to the surface at the beginning of Ep.22. In the manga, however, he is apparently Killed Offscreen by Leonof at some point during the battle. We never see his body, and Luida won't give a straight answer when Vash asks, but a later vision of Vash's where he thinks about everyone who died includes him.

Brad

Brad

Voiced by: Kouji Ishii (1998), Jun'ichi Suwabe (Stampede) (JP), Michael McConnohie (1998), Christopher Wehkamp (Stampede) (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Alessandro Rossi (Italian)

A member of the Sky City crew who serves essentially as Sensei's right-hand man. He has a massive crush on his neighbour Jessica. Unfortunately for him, she is madly in love with Vash (whom neither of them had seen since they were little kids). This reality upsets Brad and makes his already abrasive personality worse. His fate is wildly different between the anime and manga.

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• Adaptational Late Appearance: In the manga, he first appears right before the sand steamer hostage situation Vash resolves (which is episode 19 of the anime), while he's not introduced until Vash and Wolfwood actually go to Sky City in the anime in Episode 20.
• Action Survivor: As an ordinary human he destroys several of Leonof's drones, and later survives a bombing run on the Ark.
• Death by Adaptation: He is killed by Leonof (via fake-Jessica) in the anime.
• Demoted to Extra: He only appears in two episodes of the anime before dying. In the manga he's a prominent supporting character.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In the anime he dies with Vash holding onto him the whole time.
• Green-Eyed Monster: His unrequited crush on Jessica, who is head-over-heels in love with Vash, makes him an even bigger jackass than he would normally be.
• Heroic Sacrifice/Redemption Equals Death/Taking the Bullet: Anime only. He spends most of the two episodes in which he appears as a major jerk to Vash (and pretty much everyone). After the SEEDS Ship finally crashes on the planet's surface, the surviving inhabitants all blame Vash, but Brad – the only human besides Wolfwood to actually fight – stands up for him. Almost immediately after, however, a fake Jessica puppet (courtey of Leonof) pulls a gun and tries to shoot Vash. Brad, intentionally or not (it isn't clear), shields him and takes the entire clip in his back.
• Jerkass: Starts out as this towards Vash. That said, he does have a soft side, he just has some trouble showing it.
• Motivational Lie: Maximum-only. When Vash and Livio return to the Ship without Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly want to know where he is. Brad tells them that he's gone on a journey and that they will probably never see him again, rather than have them break down upon hearing that he's actually dead. They realize pretty quickly what actually happened, and Milly breaks down later.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Brad's unrequited crush on Jessica makes him an unusual male example.

Jessica

Jessica

Voiced by: Emi Motoi (JP), Julie Maddalena (EN)

^{Foreign VAs}Federica De Bortoli (Italian)

Another resident of the still-functional SEEDS ship. She first encountered Vash when she was a very young child and has had a massive crush on him ever since, much to the horror of her childhood friend Brad.

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• Broken Pedestal: Anime only. At the beginning of Episode 22, we see that she had a difficult time dealing with Brad's death and Vash's (unintentional) role in it. When Vash tries to talk with her during the funeral, she runs away crying.
• Genki Girl: She's rarely seen without a big smile on her face and is one of the characters in the manga most likely to be drawn super-deformed. The first time we see her in the anime, she's sparkling.
• Girlish Pigtails: Notable in that she's the only female in the series to have them, and she's by far the girliest.
• Mugged for Disguise: In the anime, Leonof ties her up and replaces her with a perfect-likeness puppet; said puppet then attempts to shoot Vash but kills Brad instead.
• Precocious Crush: Got one on Vash when she was a little kid. It never went away, and now that She Is All Grown Up she fully intends to act on it.
• Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: To Vash.
• Spell My Name With An S: For some reason, the artbook lists her as Charlie, which isn't even close to 'Jessica'.
• Supreme Chef: In the anime, Sensei heavily implies she is one. To prove it, we see her cooking a gorgeous feast in honour of Vash's return (he never gets to eat it due to what happens immediately after). In the manga, she's in charge of Vash's meals while he recovers from his latest fight.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: In the anime, she sews Vash's replacement jacket.

Others

Kuroneko-sama

Kuroneko-sama

"Nyao~!"

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Bill Timoney (EN)

The small black cat with huge green eyes that appears randomly at least once in every episode of the anime (but less often in the manga). Included because Nightow found the kitty easy to draw. Her name means "Lord Black Cat".

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: She has white eyes in the manga, even in color illustrations and merchandise, but the 1998 anime gives her green eyes.
• Crossdressing Voices: In the English dub, not that it matters.
• Jerkass: In Episode 25, Vash sees her and reaches down to pet her… and she slashes his hand.
• Mascot: Both an in-universe and meta example.
  • In real life, she is the unofficial mascot for the series, and Kuroneko plushies can often be found at anime conventions.
  • In an episode of the anime, locals drink out of a bottle of Kuroneko-sama brand beer. Later on, she appears on a calendar.
• Once an Episode: She appears in every episode of the anime at least once. In many episodes, she shows up more often.
• Recurring Extra: Such a recurring extra that Kuroneko-sama appears in a flashback that happened a century ago.
• Rummage Fail: In one episode Wolfwood is searching for a book in his bag and instead finds the kitty.

Lina

Lina

"That creep is a pedophile! He deserved a good thump!"

Voiced by: Tomoko Ishimura (JP), Michelle Ruff (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Rossella Acerbo (Italian)

Lina is a young girl who finds Vash and brings him home with her to take care of him after he drills a hole in the Fifth Moon. She lives with her grandmother in Kasted City.

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• Boyish Short Hair: Is quite the tomboy and has her hair short.
• Fiery Redhead: She's the only redhead in the series, and definitely gets like this when she's angry.
• Tears of Remorse: She cries when a group of thugs start punishing Vash for what she did.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite her liking to have her hair short does she like working with hair and is a skilled hairdresser.

Ingway

Ingway

Voiced by: Masashi Ebara (JP), Michael McConnohie (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Luciano De Ambrosis (Italian)

A bandit who holds a bar hostage as part of a revenge plot against the richest man in his town.

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• Anti-Villain: Although he's staging a hostage situation and is a grave man overall, he's in no mood to cause more trouble than is necessary. He goes so far as to physically restrain one of his subordinates from killing Stephanie when a backhanded comment from her sets the underling into a rage.
• Blatant Lies: Claims he was distracted when he fired.
• Call to Agriculture: His cameo in Episode 16 has him working on a farm.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His family were killed or driven off their land by Bostalk and his gang.
• Everyone Has Standards: As much as he hates Bostalk, he's not going to kill the guy in front of his daughter.
• I Have Your Wife: Daughter variant. Captures Earl Bostalk's spoiled daughter Stephanie in the middle of a card game in order to compel him into a duel.
• Noble Demon: readily turns Bostalk's daughter loose once Bostalk makes himself available for a quick draw duel. Not only that, he's satisfied with leaving Bostalk with a flesh wound instead of gunning him down as revenge for starving his family of farmers to death in the past.
• Not Worth Killing: Ultimately, he lets go of his grudge and is content with wounding Bostalk's in the arm rather than killing him.

Julius

Julius

A young boy who travels with the Demislad Caravan and is the key to the caravan's entry into the City of Fondrique. He decides to run away with Moore when he learns about the caravan's side business and his past.

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• Embarrassing Tattoo : Sort of. It serves as the key to get into Fondrique
• Non-Action Guy: But at least he tries to do something.
• Spell My Name With An S: Julius.

Moore

Moore

A poor dancing girl being taken along the Demislad Caravan route. She and Julius fall in love and decide to leave their old lives behind.

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• Say My Name: JULIUS!!

Veronica Tsubasa

Veronica Tsubasa

• Action Girl: Somewhat implied.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different

Badlands Rumble Characters

Gasback

Gasback

Voiced By: Tsutomu Isobe (JP), John Swasey (EN)^{Foreign VAs}Alfonso Vallés (Spain)

A notorious robber who escaped police capture with Vash's help 20 years before the central plot begins. Now seeking revenge against the gang who betrayed him, he targets Macca City as bounty hunters from all over the planet pursue him in hopes of claiming a huge reward.

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• Bank Robbery: Something he was great at and held much pride in until he was betrayed.
• Berserk Button: "You messed up my robbery. My robbery, damnit!"
• Determinator: There's something to be said for a guy who can take a weighted net to the face and not slow down at all.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He may be a robber but he hates those who sneak and skulk around instead of making a show of it. And he's especially disgusted with Kain's cowardice and begging once he catches up to him.
• Eyepatch of Power: Gets one after Kain shoots his eye out.
• Foil: To Vash. They're both have an Impossibly Cool Weapon that does three things, but their philosophies vary differently.
• Glory Seeker: Gasback doesn't even care about the money. He's in it for the reputation as the greatest and most daring bank robber on the planet. Deconstructed in that it's what leads Kain and the others to betray him as any monetary gains they make are always spent on planning their next robbery instead of on themselves.
• Honor Before Reason: His forte as a robber. Once he's arrested, he just sits and smiles after being beaten fair and square.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon /Swiss-Army Weapon: His oversized gauntlet fires bullets, rockets, and electrical fields.
• Monumental Thief: His goal is to steal the gigantic Plant bulb powering the city, and in doing so, destroy the city that Kain had built.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The revelation how he was indirectly responsible for his wife and daughter’s misery horrified him.
• Not Allowed to Grow Old: The beginning of the movie, where Vash saves Gasback and Kain is 20 years before the main story. By the main story, Kain has gone gray, but Gasback looks exactly the same. So does Vash, but that's justified.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Sure he got his revenge on his former associates, but he's arrested and left to reckon with the fact his wife died after he left her and his daughter loathes him for inadvardently contributing to her death. We last see him brooding in the prison wagon alone.
• Revenge: Betray him in a heist? He'll come back 20 years later, destroy what honest businesses you have and steal the only thing keeping you and an entire town alive. Go big or go home, no?
• Villainous Valor: Will charge in guns blazing no matter how many enemies stand between him and his target.

Amelia McFly

Amelia Ann McFly

Voiced By: Maaya Sakamoto (JP), Colleen Clinkenbeard (EN),

^{Foreign VAs}Carmen Calvell (Spain, adult), Ariadna Jiménez (Spain, child)

Amelia is a young woman whom Vash runs into on a sandsteamer headed for Macca City. She rejects his silly affections and despises him for allowing the robber Gasback to evade capture 20 years prior. Like many of the bounty hunters present in the city, she wants nothing more than to kill Gasback, but her reasons are far more personal...-

• Action Girl: She literally kicks the ass of some guys in the beginning of Badlands Rumble.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears one throughout the movie.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Vash.
• Character Development: She initially is dead set on killing Gasback, to protect others from dying and as revenge for her mother's death, but after spending a lot of time with Vash she seems to have adopted his philosophy, opting to send Gasback to jail rather than kill him.
• Chekhov's Gun: Her mother's "precious secret" was a glove that could neutralize the deadly electric fields Gasback created with his own gauntlet.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Starts off cold and isolated but gradually warms up.
• Does Not Like Men: Claims that she's allergic to the particularly stupid and ridiculous ones. When Vash touches her bare skin, she screams and breaks out in hives.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a redhead and she's fiery.
• Hates Being Touched: By men at least. She breaks out in hives.
• Heroic BSoD: Has a short one after she believes Vash has been killed, and realizing she may have been just as bad as Gasback. Then she snaps out of it and decides to do something about the situation, and enlists Wolfwood's help to do it.
• Improvised Weapon: Uses a Frying pan and a soup ladle to defend herself against some men in a barfight.
• Luminescent Blush: Mild case when she is drunk.
• Perpetual Frowner: Until the end of the movie when she smiles at Vash when he turns out not to be dead.
• Revenge: Originally what she was after Gasback for, since she blamed him for her mother's death. Also, seems to be later trying to avenge Vash's Disney Death as well as trying to get the plant back from Gasback.
• Ship Tease: She develops feelings for Vash.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To not only her mother, but to Gasback as well.
• You Killed My Father: Claims that it's Gasback's fault (and therefore Vash's fault) that her mother died when she was young. This is because Amelia's mother was in a relationship with Gasback but chose to stay behind until they met again. She died when robbers seeking the money Gasback gave her wounded her and the local doctor refused to help.
• Younger Than They Look: She's actually only 19, meaning if Vash hadn't saved Gasback 20 years ago, she would never have been born.
• Youthful Freckles: When she was a small child.

Kain/Kepler

Kain/Kepler

Originally part of Gasback's gang, he betrayed Gasback and left him to die after shooting him in the eye. He then began a life of making easy money in Macca City under the new name Kepler, but Gasback has plans for revenge.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Promptly begs Gasback for his life after the tables are turned on him. Twice.
• Dirty Coward: Shamelessly begs for his life and shoots his friends in an attempt to save his own skin from Gasback.
• Jerkass: Kain is all around greedy, cowardly, and extremely vain. His boss at least has some redeeming qualities, this guy is just trash.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After taking on a the new civilian persona of Kepler, Kain was able to avoid punishment for all the robberies and murders he committed in Gasback's gang. Gasback coming back for revenge though shows karma is coming back to haunt him. Then his criminal history finally gets found out and it is straight to jail he goes.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: At least partly. There are other more prominent reasons, but Gasback was shown hitting him unnecessarily at least a few times.
• One-Steve Limit: Not to be confused with the much more dangerous Caine who is a mamber of the Gung-Ho Guns.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Manages to get out of Gasback’s gang and make something of himself, but he can’t enjoy his new life since he is so terrified of Gasback taking revenge that he is in a constant state of panic and paranoia. And in the end he loses it all anyway due to his criminal history finally being revealed to all.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: When Gasback is about to shoot him, but Vash outscreams him (in an attempt to save him).
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: When Gasback is about to shoot him in the head.

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