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The characters in Xenosaga.


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Playable Characters (in order of appearance)

    Shion Uzuki 

Shion Uzuki

Voiced by: Ai Maeda in Japanese and Lia Sargent (Episode I & III), Olivia Hack (Episode II), and Stephanie Wittels (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shion_8122.jpg

Shion is the iron-willed but fairly ditzy head of Vector Industries First R&D Division's KOS-MOS project. She is the character around whom most of the events of the games revolve. She is the main protagonist of the series.


  • Ace Pilot: She piloted E.S. Dinah Filia together with Miyuki in the beginning of Episode III.
  • All-Loving Hero: She treats KOS-MOS like a living being instead of a weapon and also feels sympathy for those that KOS-MOS was created to kill. She also insists on treating realians with the same respect as humans. Ironically, the minor exception is her brother, Jin, where their relationship is strained. The sheer amount of trauma she's gone through by and during Episode III cause her to become a lot more selfish to the extent of being willing to sacrifice the universe, but her friends manage to snap her out of it.
  • Ambiguously Bi: She only ever displays interest in men, but a lot of official art shows her cradling KOS-MOS rather intimately, and the more influence she has on KOS-MOS the more fanservice is added. The final design when Shion rebuilds KOS-MOS is not only more revealing, but adds bigger breasts. The implications are almost certainly intentional by the devs, and gets brought up more directly when her alternate universe counterpart Astelle in Xenoblade 2 immediately tries to take off KOS-MOS's clothes after meeting her.
  • Badass Normal: She's the only vanilla human in the first game's party and is described as a very competent martial artist. She quickly crosses over into Empowered Badass Normal though.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Shion seems to be a pretty competent scientist when not needlessly risking her own life or forgetting important documents.
  • Can't Stand Them, Can't Live Without Them: In Episode I before she begins to trust KOS-MOS. This attitude is more prevalent in the anime version.
  • Catch a Falling Star: She manages to retrieve Ziggy and MOMO's escape ship with the Elsa's salvage hook in while in the middle of hyperspace in Episode I. Captain Matthews even gives her a, "Nice catch!"
  • Cleavage Window: Her vector uniform in Episode I has a has a hole here. Blame the designer.
  • Combat Medic: Tends to learn both healing spells and a variety of attacks.
  • Cosmic Keystone: Wears it around her neck for the entire series without ever knowing it.
  • Doomed Hometown: Just replace "hometown" with home planet.
  • Fanservice Pack: Her outfits grow more fanservice-y in each episode, culminating in an exposed midriff, shorts and Zettai Ryouiki in episode III.
    • Her Episode II costume is an aversion, however. It looks like sci-fi business casual.
  • Fear of Thunder: Understandable, since her nanny, parents, and lover were all brutally killed in front of her during two different thunderstorms.
  • Feminine Women Can Cook: She can kick some butts and still have feminine aspects. Her cooking was favorited by all the crew of Elsa because none of them can cook, but they still have to take turns to cook every single day aboard.
  • Flower Motif: Not the character, but her name. Soraya Saga says that every female character in the party was intended to have flower motif names.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: With KOS-MOS. When she and Kevin waited for KOS-MOS's awakening, they're like parents waiting for a baby to come out. Shion's motherly attitude towards KOS-MOS afterwards is even approved by CHOCO in Xeno Emission 3.
  • Heroic BSoD: After finding out she's the one who called the Gnosis into the real number domain and summoned Abel's Ark.
  • Improbable Age: She's the head of an extremely prestigious and cutting-edge research group belonging to the largest company in the galaxy while in her early twenties. And the average lifespan of humans in this universe is hundreds of years. Probably justified in that Wilhelm needed her close so that he could keep track of her and make sure that she was in the right spot at the right time. This was mostly accomplished by Kevin hand-picking her to be his Number Two, and then committing his Thanatos Gambit, leaving her as his successor by default.
  • It's All About Me: A little over halfway through Episode III, there's a universe-threatening danger going on. Shion wants to find her boyfriend very very badly. It takes a beat down from all of her friends and Allen's "No More Holding Back" Speech to snap out of it.
  • Magic Knight: She's primarily an Ether user, but she's also skilled in physical attacks.
  • Magitek: Shion's special attacks apparently use an "Ether Circuit."
  • Meaningful Name: Shion was stated by writer Soraya Saga to be named for a flower, specifically the aster (ç´«è‹‘), which in Japanese hanakotoba floriography symbolizes "remembrance". A good deal of Shion's character arc is about her unburying repressed traumatic memories so that she can grapple with them and move on from them properly.
  • Memento MacGuffin: The pendant that she's wearing belonged to Kevin's mom who's already passed away. Turns out, the pendant is the Key that Wilhelm searched for.
  • Mini Dress Of Power: Her Vector uniform in Episode I is a short dress and a jacket with tights. It returns as an alternate outfit in III.
  • Ms. Fanservice: There's one cutscene in Episode III which views her with full blown swimsuit wear.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: While she's a very capable engineer and she definitely didn't ask for it, the background details imply she's only the chief of the KOS-MOS project because she was banging Kevin and then inherited his position after the KOS-MOS archetype murdered him. Justified since it was all part of Wilhelm's Thanatos Gambit.
  • Nice Girl: Mostly, but when it comes to Jin sometimes she's this (dere-rere mode on) sometimes she's in her tsun-tsun mode.
  • No Social Skills: She has moments of empathy for others, like her little chat with MOMO on the Durandal and her mercy killing of Cecile and Cath, but beyond that she can be pretty self-centered.
  • Oblivious to Love: Allen tries to ask Shion out and/or just get across that he loves her several times in the series and she just doesn't get it. He does eventually get the girl, if only because he decided to stand up to Kevin to win her back from him. To think what would have happened if that never occurred.
  • Odd Friendship: With Kazuya Mishima of all people...
  • Official Couple: With Allen at the very end.
  • Out of Focus: Despite being the main character, the plot focuses more on Jr. and Albedo than on her and KOS-MOS during the third act of Episode I and most part of Episode II.
  • Pals with Jesus: Shion, in a past life, was called the Maiden of Mary. It seems that she and Mary Magdalene (yes, that Mary Magdalene) were very close.
  • Plucky Girl: She does rushes to fight Voyager and T-elos even though she knows they're much more stronger than her.
  • Pretty in Mink: Her jacket in III has a fur collar.
  • Protectorate: To KOS-MOS.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red to Jin's and KOS-MOS' blue.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Of Mary Magdelene, to a lesser degree than KOS-MOS.
  • Second Love: With Allen, after the party defeated Zarathustra.
  • Shorttank: While she isn't that much of a tomboy, she's a Plucky Action Girl and a bit of a Tsundere. She's even got the outfit in Episode III.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: Surprisingly she throw this to Albedo although she has no place between his and Jr.'s conflict.
  • Stripperific: Her outfit in Episode III (above), although her outfits in I and II weren't exactly conservative either.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: Shion's M.W.S. It's nerfed into a standoff weapon in Episode II, but is rebuffed in Episode III
  • Tomato in the Mirror: She made contact with the Zohar and summoned the Gnosis.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: In Episode III, although mostly out of reaction to knowing her own father took part in the Miltian Conflict, and later after knowing she called the Gnosis into their universe. Eventually gets better, though.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Curry. It's her specialty dish to make.
  • Trauma Conga Line: HOLY SHIT does she go through a big one in Episode III. Traveling back into the past, finding that her boyfriend worked with the U-TIC organization, which caused the end of her home planet, trying to save Virgil in the past when he's nearly dead just to see him die, and then meet up with cynical Jerkass present self. And then she finds out that she was responsible for summoning the Gnosis, and that her boyfriend was alive and gets torn between him and the friends she has.
  • Tsundere: Type B. Particularly to her brother Jin.
  • TV Genius: The alleged robotics genius is thicker than a brick on an interpersonal level and says and does a lot of really dumb things throughout all three games. Most obvious in the third game.
  • Villain Protagonist: Becomes this in Episode III. See It's All About Me and Took a Level in Jerkass above. She even pulled a Face–Heel Turn when she reunites with Kevin, putting her at odds with the party. She snaps out of this after a beat down from all of her friends and Allen's "No More Holding Back" Speech.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Leads firmly towards to valuing anything sentient, Realians and humans.

    KOS-MOS 

KOS-MOS

Voiced by: Mariko Suzuki in Japanese and Bridget Hoffman (Episode I & III), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (Episode II), and Luci Christian (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kosmosx3_631.jpg

KOS-MOS is an android built by Shion and Kevin Winnicot in order to battle and destroy the Gnosis threat. She can use UMN transport to manifest absurdly powerful weapons. She is capable of generating the Hilbert effect (which draws Gnosis into Real space so they can be fought) at a range wider than even 100-series Realians can do with an amplifier. Her inner workings are described as a black box, and she sometimes acts in ways that go outside her programming.


  • Ace Pilot: She pilots E.S. Dinah in Episode II.
  • Always Save the Girl: Shion. It's part of her program written by Kevin.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the power of Animus, which controls the power of Anima and the relics of God.
  • Anti-Hero: She tends to prioritize people's lives. Shion was more valuable than Virgil, so she was perfectly willing to fire through him because he couldn't get out of her way in time.
  • Arm Cannon: Her R-Cannon special attack.
  • Artificial Human: She's a battle android.
  • Back from the Dead: After being rebuild by Allen and the Professor after she was defeated by T-elos.
  • Badass Biker: Her motorcycle can also assembled with E.S. Dinah.
  • BFG: Many of her special attacks, including shoulder mounted rail guns. The guns in question tend to be several feet in length.
  • Big Damn Heroes: She saves Shion from being killed Once per Episode.
  • Black Box: Her internal functions are even described by the characters as a black box. Kevin apparently kept a lot of secrets regarding her design because after his death, KOS-MOS reveals components and abilities that even Shion doesn't understand. Shion does finally understand them when she gets the chance to see KOS-MOS's original blue prints.
  • Bottomless Magazines: When she fires her gattling gun it doesn't need to be reloaded in gameplay
  • The Cameo: She appears in many other games associated with Namco. All appearances that were made after Episode 3 was released except Xenoblade 2 (due to that KOS-MOS being a Blade created in the image the original KOS-MOS) are the original KOS-MOS after she disappeared following the ending of Episode 3, with her always having the goal of finding her way back to Shion. She finally is implied to be in her first Canon appearance since Xenosaga III's ending at the end of Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, being the blue light falling back to Earth after the Bionis and Alrest properly fuse following Origin's activation.
  • Catchphrase: "I'm happy to be of service."
  • Chest Blaster: Her X-BUSTER located at the belly-region and (Form 4) D-TENERITAS is fired from just above her chest.
    • The name's Phase Transfer Cannon (in Episode III, the cannon has already become part of her after she's awaken in her 4th Form.).
  • Combat Stilettos: Her feet are given high heels for some reason.
  • The Comically Serious: Most humor involving her has her reacting seriously to silly situations.
  • Crazy-Prepared: She's always ready for almost everything.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: When she was found by the party inside her Encephalon Dive in Episode I.
  • Determinator: She's always great when it comes to critical situations. But some times she'll still lose.
  • Denser and Wackier: A very strange case, since most of her crossover appearances post Episode 3 are implied to be canon due to the Zohar teleporting her to other dimensions. After disappearing at the end of Episode 3, in her cameo appearances something is a little "off" with KOS-MOS. Her status as the The Comically Serious is Flanderized, she unintentionally causes a lot more Black Comedy due to being too analytical, spouts pop-culture references by abusing her powers as a robot to surf the internet, and she sometimes imitates cats. Most of her modern personality as fans know it and the way Monolith writes her now is actually formed from her appearances in other games, as she was much more serious and her lack of empathy moments were usually not Played for Laughs in her original games. The difference when watching her in Xenosaga to how she is now can be a bit jarring. Somewhat justified for Xenoblade 2, since it isn't the same KOS-MOS from Xenosaga.
  • Do-Anything Robot: When it comes to weapons, story wise, if they exist, she can use them.
  • Dynamic Entry: When she comes to save Shion in Episode I. This trope was used by her repeated times, in fact.
  • Emotionless Girl: She's an android designed to fight. Emotions weren't really a priority.
  • Fanservice Pack: Her appearance gets hotter and hotter with every new frame. Especially if Shion had a hand in designing them.
  • Feels No Pain: Which makes sense when she asked such thing to Shion and later chaos in the Epilogue.
    "Will feeling pain, make me complete?"
  • Flawed Prototype: At first when she hasn't been completed yet.
  • Flower Motif: Her name, and also her 2nd form was derived from seashell (not a shell, but a part of flower).
  • Fun with Acronyms: Her name is a recursive acronym meaning "Kosmos Obey Strategic Multiple Operation Systems".
  • Gatling Good: A large machine gun is one of her summoned weapons but it is rather weak despite what their size would imply. However, they're her most iconic weapons.
  • Girlish Pigtails: In her 4th form early design, CHOCO mistakenly draws her with these.
  • Hair Antennae: Disappears only in Episode II.
  • Heroic RRoD: When she defends the party from T-elos. And she was on a great pinch because of her remaining active time and damaged left arm.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Repeatedly, thanks to her Made of Iron mechanical construction and the skill of Shion, the Professor, and other engineers.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Shion as Shion herself thinks KOS-MOS as her daughter or sister.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Justified since she uses U.M.N transport to access her arsenal, most of which is ridiculously huge.
  • Innocent Blue Eyes: Appeared two times throughout the series. These eyes appear only in critical situations where she must save Shion. It was Mary Magdelene's will who's resided within her and sometimes awoke. She loses them for good while keeping her personality and powers when she denies she is Mary to Wilhelm at the very end of Episode III.
  • In the Back: When she delivers the final strike to Voyager.
  • Invincible Hero: During I and II, outside of gameplay she's nearly invincible. It's not until III where she displays any vulnerability.
  • Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Averted, she states in Xenosaga Freaks that she hates cats. Though this seems to depend on her incarnation, as her appearances in several crossovers such as Endless Frontier and Project X Zone involve her making cat puns, and her headgear in games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 resemble cat ears.
    "I prefer not to be involved with them too much."
  • Lack of Empathy: In Episode I when Shion protests for her lack of conscience by killing Virgil just because he was on her line of fire, she simply answers that of all people Shion should know that she is merely a weapon, not a human being.
  • Literal Split Personality: Subverted. In Episode III, KOS-MOS herself said that she's both Mary Magdelene and not at the same time.
  • Made of Iron: Even a beating from a beating from Ω Res Novae — a veritable Weapon of Mass Destruction in the form of a Humongous Mecha — didn't do any permanent damage to her.
  • Male Gaze: Everytime 4th form KOS-MOS activates Phase Transfer Cannon, duh.
  • Meaningful Name: Her name means "order" in Greek. According to Word Of God, her name references a flower with the same name.
  • Mecha Expansion Pack: The Third Armament equipment.
  • Mighty Glacier: In terms of gameplay, in cutscenes she's a Lightning Bruiser. KOS-MOS is durable and poses a variety of powerful offensive moves, but is slow.
  • Ms. Fanservice: The biggest one in the series. It says something about Shion that the more influence she has on KOS-MOS's design, the more fanservice there is.
  • My Nayme Is: Her name is always spelled in all capitals. This is due to it being an acronym, but it's also a hint of her relationship with chaos, who conversively, his name is always spelled in all lower case regardless of grammar rules.
  • My Name Is Inigo Montoya: She gave this to Wilhelm after she destroys Shion's pendant before his eyes.
    "I am not Mary. I'm... KOS-MOS!"
  • Navel-Deep Neckline: In Episode III, when she activates her (now attached) Transfer Phase Cannon the "hatch" located at her chest will open the cloth and reveal this.
  • Not Quite Dead: Played for Laughs in Episode I when everyone on Elsa thought that she's a corpse drifting in the space, when suddenly she opens her eyes much to their surprise.
  • One-Woman Army: As mentioned above, she is capable of taking on many many hostiles all on her own.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: When her prototype model went berserk and killed everyone in the facility except Shion and Cherenkov.
  • Power Fist: Gives this to the Elsa when Matthews boasts about the strength of the spacecraft's glass. Surprisingly for him, she managed to make a crack and she gave him this as his last warning. Otherwise they're all going to be sent off to the space and unfortunately for them, none of them uses any space suit at that moment.
  • Power Limiter: She can limit her output power and the Phase Transfer Cannon as well when Shion orders her to do so.
  • The Quiet One: For most of the time, she'll not talk unless someone started the conversation first.
  • Recursive Acronym: The K in KOS-MOS stands for KOS-MOS. Her full "name" is actually Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation Systems.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: She's one of the good people but she is also very dangerous and willing to kill others.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The calm and emotionless blue to Shion and T-elos's emotional red.
  • Rei Ayanami Expy: She is a blue haired, pale skinned, artificial human construct who acts robotically and is a major relation to the main character. She specifically is designed to destroy Gnosis similar to Rei's use as EVA-00's pilot.She also houses the soul of an important person in human history, in this case being Mary Magdalene, and is capable of interfacing with the human subconscious in order to both guide it and use it as a weapon to defeat alien beings. She's also critical to the plot of the main villain and the desires of Shion's lover, Kevin. She ultimately rejects this and chooses faith in humanity over faith in the form of Shion's desires.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Of Mary Magdelene.
  • Robot Girl: One of the most iconic robot girls in video games.
  • Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: The conscience of Mary Magdelene is stored within KOS-MOS and is used to oppose the power of Anima (should anything bad happen) whom is chaos.
  • Series Mascot: Even people who've never played Xenosaga have at least heard of KOS-MOS.
  • She's Back: When she awakens in her 4th form and saves everyone from Voyager in Episode III, following her defeat against T-Elos.
  • Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Her hair is blue and she's very quiet and reserved.
  • Sinister Scythe: Her ultimate weapon in Episode I.
  • Small Girl, Big Gun: She's one of the tallest characters in the series. It just so happens that her guns are just ridiculous.
  • Soul Jar: To T-Elos, to a degree. KOS-MOS' body was supposed to only be a temporary container of the Soul of Mary Magdalene, which was meant to be eventually absorbed by T-Elos.
  • Stocking Filler: In Episode I, The Missing Year and Episode III (4th form).
  • The Stoic: As she is a machine and doesn't seem to programed with emotion.
  • Stripperific: A constant across all her various bodies and outfits... and apparently in direct proportion to Shion's role in designing them.
  • Summon to Hand: All of her weapons which comes out of the U.M.N network.
  • Super Mode: She appears to be more powerful with her blue eyes.
  • Super Prototype: She was the first model of the production (and yet she's so powerful); intended to be Mary's vessel before T-elos comes to destroy her.
  • Super-Reflexes: Combined with Crazy Prepared for awesome.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: KOS-MOS herself. Specifically her arms.
  • Techno Babble: Every time she informs something about their current location or the enemy, specifically about her current condition.
  • The Mentor: Hinted that she was Galea's/Meyneth's in Project X Zone 2: Brave New World.
  • Took a Level in Badass: As if she wasn't nearly at the badass level cap to begin with, her receation using Erde Kaiser parts coupled with her "awakening" brought her from being roughly 1/5 as powerful as T-elos to such a level of badass that she defeated her one-time destroyer seemingly without effort.
  • Underboobs: All of her Episode III costumes serve these.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Shion.
  • Unwitting Pawn: To Wilhelm since the very beginning.
  • Wolverine Publicity: She is the most marketed character in the game, with tons of crossovers and merchandises. She has the most crossover appearances among all Xeno characters, including Shulk.
  • The Worf Effect: Got subject to this in III against Ω Res Novae, with even X-Buster that wiped out a planet's worth of Gnosis, had no effect on it, and later against T-elos fails to even scratch her and gets an even worse beating than she did from Ω Res Novae.
  • To Become Human: It was Kevin's desire to make her human. Well, she made it in Episode III with Mary's will inside her.
    • To a lesser degree, Shion just wants her to understand human's emotions.
  • You Are Number 6: Professor Haksheen White referred to KOS-MOS as "Assistant #3".
  • Your Head A-Splode: When Shion was forced to terminate the now berserk prototype KOS-MOS, she shot her at head and BOOM!

    chaos 

chaos

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi in Japanese and Derek Stephen Prince (Episode I), Joshua Seth (Episode II & III), and Clint Bickham (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chaos_xenosaga_9561.jpg

chaos is a very mysterious young man working aboard the tramp freighter Elsa. He seems to have connections to Jr. and Jin that date back decades. He also has some sort of connection to KOS-MOS as well as the Testaments and Wilhelm. He can destroy Gnosis with a touch.


  • A God I Am Not: He has the "power of God" which is Anima, but he didn't use it for God-wannabe schemes.
  • Ace Pilot: Piloted E.S. Asher together with Canaan 14 years ago during the Miltia War.
  • Ambiguously Human: For most of the series, it's unclear what he is. Turns out he's not human.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the power of Anima, a failsafe built into the Universe to destroy the "lower number domain" (the "real" universe) if the dispersal of consciousness ever threatened to destroy the "upper number domain." Naturally, chaos doesn't really want to do that.
  • Apocalypse Maiden: He was this once, until Mary sacrifices herself to divide his power into 12 vessels of Anima.
  • Apologetic Attacker: In Episode II if you execute his Heaven's Wrath sometimes he'll say "sorry".
  • Badass Bystander: Until Episode III where his true identity is revealed.
  • Bare-Fisted Monk: More apparent in the third game. In the first two, his fighting style is more like Full-Contact Magic.
  • Bash Brothers: With Jin. They both even have their own Double skill at the beginning of Episode II. This also happens in the anime version.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: The nice guy of the series. Also the one with the power to destroy Gnosis with a touch. And is an immortal, and implied to be the one behind Jesus's miracles. Oh, and he's the harbringer of the Apocalypse, if it ever comes to that.
  • Big Damn Heroes: In the ending of Episode I when KOS-MOS once again pulls another crazy Heroic Sacrifice moment to save the Elsa from being burned in the atmosphere, he opens Abel's Ark that ends up saving everyone.
  • Blessed with Suck: His power of Anima is to ensure that the dissipation of the Collective Unconscious doesn't engulf both the Upper and Lower Domains and destroy the universe. While this sounds all well and good, the alternative is that his power actually only contains the dissipation inside the Lower Domain, that is, the world the characters live in and the world where the Collective Unconscious resides, meaning, the Lower Domain is sacrificed to save the Upper Domain.
  • Brought Down to Normal: After Mary divides his power.
  • Feather Motif: In this case, the feathers hint at a connection to the divine/angels.
  • Foil: His name to KOS-MOS's Greek meaning "order" and his name written in lowercase contrasts to KOS-MOS's uppercase.
  • Full-Contact Magic: His attacks always result in light spheres.
  • Hair Antennae: Disappears only in Episode II.
  • Heroic Neutral: He acts like a Badass Bystander during the majority of the plot (with only a declaration of... something at the end of Episode 2) and only reveals his full power at the end.
  • Humans Are Special: He chooses to trust in the humanity rather than join Wilhelm's scheme.
  • Jack of All Trades: When he worked on Elsa, he had several roles in the airship and he also did things other than his job.
  • Kung-Fu Jesus: This is almost as literal a case you can get. He fights with his fists and was the Man Behind the Man to Jesus. i.e. chaos did Jesus' miracles while Jesus got the credit. Also, Wilhelm once called chaos "Yeshua," a name which the original etymology of Jesus.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Inverted: chaos is supposedly the man who worked the miracles for "The Messiah" (read: Jesus) while said Messiah was the public figure who everyone thought was doing them. Not really all that evil.
  • Made of Iron: Inside the E.S. Asher when Canaan impressed and told chaos that anyone should be passed out by his maneuver attack.
    chaos: "It's true. You really are as good as they say."
    Canaan: "How are you handling the feedback?"
    Canaan: "You know, a normal person would've probably passed out by now."
  • Meaningful Name: His name has a point in one of Jesus's sayings that He came not to bring peace but to torn/seperate the believers and the non-believers.
    "I want to believe in the existence of order born from discord."
  • My Nayme Is: His name is always spelled in all lower case letters, regardless of grammar rules. This is a hint of his relationship with KOS-MOS, who conversively, her name is always spelled in all capitals, and not only because it's an acronym.
  • Mystical White Hair: He's got white hair and is some sort of universal failsafe.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: He can teleport. He did it twice on the Elsa in Episode I when he made his first appearance and after he bids good night to the sleeping KOS-MOS inside her sleeping pod. KOS-MOS was the only one in the entire series who noticed this.
  • Pals with Jesus: Literally. Even chaos was once one of Jesus's disciples in the story. It was implied that it was Jesus' teaching that lead his trust in the humanity.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: With Mary Magdelene in the past.
  • Physical God: He possesses the "power of God".
  • Power Gives You Wings: In Episode I and several artworks.
  • Power Glows: When he summons Abel's Ark in Episode I. Also his Episode III artwork depicts this of his hands.
  • Power Limiter: According to the ODM, chaos wears a Form-Fitting Wardrobe to restrain his power (they emit from his skin, particularly from his hands). In the first game, his successive equipment was gloves that got increasingly thinner, with the final set being literally holey gloves.
  • Right Hand of Doom: To the Gnosis.

    Ziggy 

Ziggy / Ziggurat 8 / Jan Sauer

Voiced by: Masashi Ebara in Japanese and Richard Epcar (games) and Jason Douglas (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ziggy_copy_5885.jpg

Ziggurat 8, dubbed "Ziggy" by MOMO, was a police man named Jan Sauer in life. He committed suicide after losing his wife and child and was resurrected as a cyborg. He was hired to rescue MOMO from the U-TIC organization. He seeks to have all the organic parts of his brain replaced with machines so he can finally die. Eventually becomes a father figure to MOMO.


  • Affectionate Nickname: More like casual nickname, but nonetheless, Jr. mainly calls him "Old Man".
  • Baritone of Strength: One of the deepest-voiced characters in the series (on the English dub, at least). And he's able to storm U-TIC's asteroid base as a one-man-army to break MOMO out of captivity.
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: A fold-out one that stays sheathed in Artificial Arms most of the time. He uses it for melee attacks.
  • BFG: All of his special weapons.
  • Cyborg: He is one, but is considered obsolete by the time the series starts. Doesn't stop him from kicking ass all over the place.
  • Driven to Suicide: Jan was an officer with the Federation police; the outcome of his investigation into Voyager's murderous streak drove him to take his own life. Trouble was, he didn't read the fine print on his organ donor paperwork in an age of cybernetics and advanced robotics...
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Suitable trope for both Ziggy and MOMO if you have them both in your party in Episode II and III.
  • Hammerspace: Presumably he uses UMN transport for his BFGs, just like KOS-MOS.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Invoked by Jr.. Ziggy spends a lot of time lecturing Jr to never let his emotions get the better of him during a high stress situation.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: His self preservation directives prevent him from killing himself.
  • Icy Blue Eyes: He's a good man, though his eyes speaks differently.
  • Mighty Glacier: Up there with KOS-MOS in dishing out damage, but he's just as slow as his bulky metal limbs would imply.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: His looks and attitude were based on David Bowie and his Ziggy Stardust persona.
  • Not So Stoic: After he sees Voyager in Episode II, we get to see him get pissed.
  • Parental Substitute: He's basically the father MOMO never had, going beyond his assigned mission of protecting her and praising her for accomplishments (such as piloting) and relating to her as an individual and a girl instead of a doll or a replacement.
  • Punny Name: His human name was Jan Sauer. Who's demeanour can easily be described as "sour"? You guessed it!
  • Really 700 Years Old: He is frozen at the age of his death, which is his early thirties. However, he is about 130 years old.
  • The Stoic: At first appearance, Ziggy just wants to rescue MOMO so he can circumvent his programming and shuffle off this mortal coil. He didn't expect MOMO to remind him what it was like to be a father.
  • Suddenly Shouting: The number of times he raises his voice can be counted on one hand, then he sees Voyager and invokes Say My Name with his voice fueled by pure vitriol.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: Ziggy himself has one due to his cyborg modifications. He has stuff like blades, lasers, bludgeons, missile pods all installed in his arms and other body parts.
  • Take a Third Option: At the end of Pied Piper, Voyager offers Jan the choice of becoming a Testament like him, or being absorbed into his consciousness like all his other victims. Jan puts his service pistol to his head and blows his brains out.
  • To Become Human: Inverted. Ziggy is a human who wants to become a machine. The oddness of this request is noted given that Realians want to be recognized as fully living just like humans. It eventually played straight. He stops his mechanizing after some Character Development from meeting MOMO and finding out Voyager is alive.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: Not that he wanted to be rebuilt...but they did it anyway after he died.

    MOMO 

MOMO Mizrahi

Voiced by: Rumi Shishido in Japanese and Sherry Lynn (Episode I), Christina Puccelli (Episode II & III), and Brittney Karbowski (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/momo_xenosaga_293.jpg

MOMO is the prototype 100-series Realian (a type of organic android) who is widely sought after for the data her "father," Joachim Mizrahi, left inside her. She regards council member Juli Mizrahi as her mother and is visibly distressed when her mother doesn't want anything to do with her. She has the appearance of a 12-year-old girl.


  • Ace Pilot: She pilots (Ziggy credited her for the pilot) the airship used by both of her and Ziggy during their flee from U-TIC. In the next games she pilots E.S. Zebulun.
  • Age-Inappropriate Dress: Her Episode I outfit includes a very short skirt.
  • Alone with the Psycho: Near the end of Episode I, she's alone with Albedo.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Episode I only. "I'm sorry, are you okay?" is one of her standard battle ending phrases.
  • Artificial Human: She's a Realian who was based on a real human.
  • Bunnies for Cuteness: She receives a bunny stuffed animal in the anime version.
  • The Cameo: She appears together with Shion and KOS-MOS in Namco X Capcom.
  • Cherry Blossom Girl: She's based on Sakura Mizrahi, the deceased daughter of Juli and Joachim Mizrahi. MOMO's pink hair and status as a White Magician Girl (at least in the first two games) seems to be a reference to this trope.
  • Cute Bruiser: She's an adorable little girl who can dish out the pain like no other.
  • Daddy's Girl: MOMO is really fond of her father, from what she can remember of him. She doesn't believe the rumors of his insanity when they pop up, even when they're seen as the common opinion. It is believed (even by her sisters) that she was Joachim's favorite.
  • Distressed Damsel: In Episode I, she is held captive by the U-TIC which is why Ziggy was hired to rescue her at the start of the game. Later in Episode I, Albedo abducts her during the evacuation of the Kukai Foundation, from which the others need to rescue her.
  • Drives Like Crazy: During Episode II's Chase Scene. Justified in that she was driving away from people who were trying to capture her (with Jr., Ziggy and chaos beside her at the same time).
  • Face Death with Dignity: When it looks like her rescue mission fails and she and Ziggy are about to die during the hyperspace chase, he apologizes for failing her. She tells him it's okay and that, despite being a little scared, she knew he did his best and neither one would be dying alone.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Her name means "Multiple Observative Mimetic Organicus".
  • Glass Cannon: Her attacks hit hard, but she can't take damage very well.
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: If you have her together with Ziggy in Episode II and III.
  • Healing Hands: She has nano technology curing ability.
  • Living MacGuffin: She has the Y-Data which contains ALL Joachim Mizrahi's research notes. And because of this, she was pursued by the U-TIC and Albedo. In Episode II, Albedo finally succeeds to snatch it away from her.
  • The Load: A minor example in Episode I. Her low health, Awesome, but Impractical transformations and limited Ether spells mean that she's only useful as a back-row healer, which means she can't do anything but heal.
  • Magical Girl: In Episode I, MOMO has in-battle Transformation Sequences that give her special abilities. Seriously. Her name is also a Shout-Out to a classic magical girl, Minky Momo.
  • Magic Knight: Due to gameplay mechanics in Episode III, she can be the best at dealing the most single target physical damage of all playable characters, even if her actual strength is actually dishing magical attacks and heals. Of course, she's not able to take damage as well as other characters, and takes certain gearing to bring her to average defensive wise.
  • Magikarp Power: In Episode I, though she may start off with low physical stats, MOMO actually has a very high strength cap. With enough grinding along with her Physical based tech attacks like Star Strike, Dark Scepter, or Star Cannon, the latter being an area of effect attack that hits all enemies, MOMO can feasibly dish out as much damage as Jr. can.
  • Meaningful Name: MOMO means peach or peach blossom in Japanese. And this become the reason why Albedo calls her "ma peche" (my peach).
  • The Medic: Primarily a healing Ether user.
  • Mini Dress Of Power: In Episode I.
  • Morality Pet: For Jr.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: One of her techs in Xenosaga III is her own version of Ziggy's basic attack, Sword Fish, identical in animation and name. Since it does more damage and includes a heavy breaking effect, this pretty much reveals that MOMO punches harder than Ziggy. Mull that one over. Possibly justified by her being a super-advanced Realian.
  • Nice Girl: She's very kind to everyone she meets.
  • Proper Tights with a Skirt: In Episode III.
  • Protectorate: To Jr. and Ziggy.
  • Replacement Goldfish:
    • To Ziggy for his dead child, presumably to Joachim for his daughter Sakura, and possibly to Jr. for Sakura.
    • Joachim and, eventually, Juli come to see her as a second daughter than a Replacement Goldfish for Sakura. It's even mentioned that their personalities are very different.
  • Robot Kid: Though not technically a robot but a biological Realian she still has the elements such as technical ability, artificial origin, creators are addressed as her parents etc.
  • Rose-Haired Sweetie: She has pink hair and she's really sweet and girly.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Since her bow channels Ether energy, and she is an ether attacker in almost all of her skill paths, the bow actually is a better choice for a weapon than a more "modern" weapon, at least in game logic.
  • Third-Person Person: She refers to herself in third-person in Japanese, even when volunteering to drive during a high-speed chase.
  • To Become Human: Dr. Mizrahi told her that if she did many good deeds, she'd become a real person. Indeed, she gets closer than most after the end of Episode III - the Encyclopedia mentions that she gained an upgrade that would allow her to carry a child.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: She's more girly than Sakura who Jr. mentioned to be more tomboy, according to Juli Mizrahi.
  • Took a Level in Badass: From a Magical Girl in Episode I to an impressive arrow shooter in the next Episodes.
  • "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: She seeks approval from her "mother" Juli Mizrahi as something more than a replacement doll for her and her husband's deceased daughter, Sakura.
  • White Magician Girl: Fits to a T in the first game, being primarily a support character, very feminine, a Mysterious Waif, and wielding a rod. Her skillset is player defined in the second, and in the third, you can choose to make her a Black Mage or a break attacker.

    Jr. 

Gaignun Kukai Jr. / Rubedo

Voiced by: Erika Kawasaki in Japanese and Brianne Siddall (games) and Greg Ayres (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jr_xenosaga_3938.jpg

A gung-ho young man who commands the starship Durandal. He is second in command of the powerful Kukai Foundation, although his exact relationship to the owner, Gaignun, is the matter of some speculation. His weapon of choice is antique dual pistols.


  • Adorably Precocious Child: He looks like he's in his preteens, but acts much more mature. His design is obviously intended to play up the cute aspect of this. However, it's later revealed that he's actually immature for his chronological age, which is somewhere around 30.
  • Artificial Human: Jr. is a URTV, a human specifically designed and created to fight U-DO.
  • Badass Longcoat: In Episode I and Episode II. In Episode III he gets a Badass Shortcoat.
  • Bond One-Liner: Usually as part of his victory pose after battle:
    • Episode I: "Sayonara, baby!"
    • Episode II: "I'll be sure to send you some flowers."
    • Episode III: "Try again in ten years!"
  • Bottomless Magazines: In multiple scenes, Jr. is seen firing many more shots than what would be possible from a pistol.
  • Comically Missing the Point: He does this in Episode II at the Moby Dick Cafe when he misinterprets Shion's hands signals while she's trying to hide from Jin, who just stepped into the cafe.
  • Compensating for Something: Shelley implies this is why he uses guns.
  • Composite Character: He has the same weapons, similar attacks, similar Badass Longcoat, and same baby face as Billy Lee Black from Xenogears, which may also be where his religiously-themed clothing and Angelic Requiem attacks come from. He also shares his Hot-Blooded personality, role, and red ship with Bart Fatima.
  • Conjoined Twins: He and Albedo were this to each other.
  • Cultured Warrior: In contrast to Albedo who is just Wicked Cultured.
  • Doppelganger Link: Between all the remaining URTVs, but especially strong with his formerly conjoined twin, Albedo.
  • Guns Akimbo: His weapons are a pair of pistols, because he's so fond of Gunslinger heroics.
  • The Gunslinger: Jr. is the perfect example of when this trope is used outside of Westerns and it works.
  • Hot-Blooded: He's very emotional and prone to jumping into things without thinking.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: One of his attacks in the first game, Storm Waltz, has him toss a bunch of coins into the air, then shooting every one of them, causing the bullets to ricochet off the coins and hit the enemies.
  • Little Big Brother: He's this to both Gaignun/Nigredo and Albedo.
  • Never Grew Up: Jr's powers have frozen his physical age in his late preteens or early teens. He's really in his twenties and the oldest of the variants (including Gaignun). It's also implied he can live as long as he wants, having The Ageless type Immortality.
  • Older Than They Look: Since he's doesn't age, he looks like a pre-teen but is actually older than that.
  • Red Is Heroic: He's clearly one of the good guys, and, aside from being identified by his red hair, he wears a light-red turtleneck and a deep red longcoat in Episode II.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to chaos' and Gaignun's blues.
  • Warrior Poet: Jr. likes to quote from books, which are considered antiques by Xenosaga's time. One 4Koma pokes fun at this by having Allen being bewildered at how to even start reading one.
  • You Are Number 6: He is URTV #666, also codenamed Rubedo.
  • Young Gun: In addition to being The Gunslinger, Jr. completely fits this role as well. He's both, because he is actually over twenty years old and is definitely experienced enough to be an actual gunslinger. However, since he looks and acts like a typical Young Gun, he fits this too. The only difference is that he's not attached to any sort of older mentor.

    Jin Uzuki 

Jin Uzuki

Voiced by: Hideyuki Tanaka in Japanese, and Crispin Freeman (Episode I), Michael Gough (Episode II & III), and Chris Ayres (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jinuzuki_5763.jpg

Shion's brother, a slacker who abandoned medical practice shortly after completing his training and bounces from obsession to obsession. He currently runs a book shop full of actual paper books, which baffles and infuriates Shion. He has a history with chaos, and was deeply involved with the incident on Old Miltia that led to it being sealed away.


  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Jin's sword can cut through just about anything.
  • Ace Pilot: Pilots E.S. Reuben.
  • Aloof Big Brother: To Shion. He admits he does this out of fear of her completely rejecting him.
  • Apologetic Attacker: "Forgive me."
  • An Ice Person: He has Ice ether skills. Opposed to Margulis's fire element.
  • Badass Bookworm: Jin is this to the point that he owns his own bookstore. He loves reading to the point where he still caries around paper books in an age where they're considered antique (and acting like a kid in a candy store with Jin's bookstore), but is also very emotional and Trigger-Happy.
  • Badass Normal: Jin is perhaps the only "normal" human in the group, and only KOS-MOS can rival him at being the biggest badass.
  • Bash Brothers: With chaos.
  • BFS: Averted by his normal sized katana in melee combat, but played dead straight while in his ES (giant mecha) which carries a pair that are almost as long as it is tall.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Jin can slice through giant mecha with a sword, while ostensibly being a normal human.
  • Cool Old Guy: Definitely not the oldest party member by technicality (e.g. Ziggy is in his 130s and is also a resurrected cyborg, so doens't look it), but he's definitely "old" for most JRPG party members. And the coolness part is not in dispute, given that he's at one point shown to be able to take out an A.W.M.S. on foot, with his sword, in an Establishing Character Moment early on in Episode II.
  • Counter-Attack: One of Jin's skill trees.
  • Cultured Badass: Owns and operates a bookshop (physical books, which have been antiquated for ages at the time Xenosaga takes place.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Despite getting fatally impaled multiple times, Jin manages to successfully contribute in fending off the Gnosis and protect chaos, Nephilim, and Abel performing the shift, and also Shion and the rest of the party, allowing them to escape. He then succumbs to his wounds.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: He only appears briefly in one scene in the first game, but his nagging and whiny personality there is wildly different from how he's depicted in the later episodes.
  • Everything's Better with Samurai: Like Citan before him, Jin is quite skilled with a katana.
  • Expy: He's a pretty blatant mirror of Citan Uzuki from Xenogears, to the point of even sharing his voice actor in Japanese. Although, in some ways he is also a Deconstruction of Citan's more over-the-top aspects as in his case it tends to make him come off as a bit of an awkward loser.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Jin is probably one of the strongest beings in the entire team next to KOS-MOS and chaos, and capable of absurd Charles Atlas Superpower feats.. in story. In gameplay, this seems to exist solely to justify why he fights enemies with a katana and can keep up with the rest of the team as a party member, because he's about as reasonably capable as every other party member overall. It's entirely possible to get the story emphasizing him to be such a Badass Normal and then see him kiss the floor with little effort in the following fight.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: See Dying Moment of Awesome above.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: His weapon is a katana.
  • The Last Dance: Has one with Margulis lategame in Episode III. Margulis has nothing left at that point, his whole religion and motivation being exposed as a lie, and duels Jin to the death as that gives him some sort of meaning.
  • Nice Guy: Nothing about him is remotely villanous or selfish, even if he has his flaws.
  • Obi-Wan Moment: His final moments after being fatally wounded by the Gnosis are resting against the remains of Asher, propped up by a sword, reflecting on the irony of now that he has achieved the quiet he's longed for, he wishes for the noise of others.

Non-playable Characters

    Nephilim 

Nephilim

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/200px-Nephili2__6765.png

A mysterious girl who appears before Shion many times, starting when she first encounters the Zohar. She seems to have a connection to chaos.


  • Cryptic Conversation: She gets called out on it at one point.
    Shion: What do you want? Are you here to say a bunch of cryptic things again and confuse me? You're always like that. You just appear in front of me, say whatever you feel like, then just watch without actually doing anything!
  • Expy: She looks remarkably like Elly from Xenogears. Given the ending with her and Abel, this was probably very deliberate.
  • Meaningful Name: Nephilim means "watchers" or "those who have come down."

    Febronia 

Febronia

Voice by: Kari Wahlgren

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/febronia.png

Shion's childhood nanny, who has somehow begun to appear to her in visions.


    Allen Ridgeley 

Allen Ridgeley

Voiced by: Hiroaki Hirata in Japanese, and Dave Wittenberg (games) and Blake Shepard (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/allen-ridgeley_7232.jpg

Shion's subordinate, who has a hopeless crush on her. He has a tendency to whine and get weepy and emotional when faced with adversity.


  • Cannot Spit It Out: He has a crush on Shion, but can't work up the nerve to tell her. Justified: Shion hasn't had the nicest of lives, especially with people that are close to her. He's afraid that in getting close to her, he'll end up hurting her more by reopening old wounds or otherwise. When he does work up the courage to say it, however...
  • Guest-Star Party Member: Uses a cross-bow weapon in battle, when he briefly joins the party in Episode III. Sadly but fittingly, he's got Momo's frailty and lack of attack power, and Ziggy's low Ether Points and Ether Attack.
  • Nice Guy: Never puts himself above or before anyone else, even with regards to his love for Shion
  • Non-Action Guy: Never participates as a party member until Episode III despite being Shion's secret lover for all three games.
    • Downplayed in Episode I because while he may not be playable he is shown using a machine gun in cutscenes.
    • Defied when he finally stands up to Kevin. And kills a Gnosis. With a rifle's butt!
    • You also get to have him in battles in the third game where he wields a crossbow.
  • Only Sane Man: The only vanilla human who tags along with the party.
  • "Reason You Suck" Speech: To Kevin.
  • Secretly Wealthy: Evidently, Allen comes from a wealthy family but he never flaunts it and prefers not to rely on their help.

    Miyuki Itsumi 

Miyuki Itsumi

Voiced by: Emi Uwagawa in Japanese and Michelle Ruff (Episode I) and Heather Hogan (Episode II & III) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/-miyuki-itsumi_3794.jpg

Miyuki is a systems programmer for Vector and an amateur inventor. She is very fond of Shion and goes out of her way to help her out with her inventions when she can.


  • Butt-Monkey: Played for laughs.
  • Flanderization: She suffers from this horribly in the third game, turning her into a Butt-Monkey ditz with everyone showing little faith in her doing ANYTHING right and treating her pretty horrible as a result, especially by Shion.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Of a slightly toned down variety. She's invents all of Shion's MWSs, including her Infinity +1 Sword version, plus KOS-MOS's Infinity Plus One Scythe in Episode I. Her hobby is sending off patent applications to the Federation Patent Office.
  • Otaku: For weaponry.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: She designed the MWS, Shion's weapon in the game. When she joins you she fights with the older version Shion used in Episode I.

    Canaan 

Canaan

Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya in Japanese and Beng Spies (Episode II) and Steve Blum (Episode III) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/547217_300px_canaan.jpg

A specialized Realian built with enhanced memory, reflexes, and suppressed emotion. He pilots the ES Asher.


  • Heroic Sacrifice: With some marks for being a Guile Hero by using the otherwise nigh-unbeatable Voyager's power-lust against him.
  • The Mole: Although he is not aware of it.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Canaan's mind is actually that of Lactis, the Realian that helped Ziggy back when he was alive. He doesn't remember this.
  • The Stoic: He's a Realian, so he doesn't really have emotions.

    Doctus 

Doctus

Voiced by: Mary Elizabeth McGlynn in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/doctus.png

Leader of the anti-Vector terrorist organization Scientia. Doctus helps co-ordinate Shion and the party's quest to uncover Vector's dirty secrets in Episode III.


  • Hacker Cave: She as a modest one glimpsed in A Missing Year.
  • Hikikomori: Bit of an enforced example. If she appears out in public, Vector will have her assassinated.
  • The Mentor: To Shion (and Miyuki).
  • Out of Focus: After playing a major role in the A Missing Year and the Episode III prologue, she all but disappears after that, putting in sporadic appearances here and there before resurfacing in time for the epilogue.
  • Orcus on His Throne: The real Doctus never appears until the denumont of Episode III. Up to that point, she's been in hiding in an undisclosed location operating through remote controlled body doubles. Justified in that Vector apparently has a kill-on-sight order on her.
  • Remember the New Guy?: In all fairness, she's introduced in a canon interactive comic prior to her appearance in Episode III. It was simply never localized for North America.
  • Send in the Clones: She has a veritable army of android body doubles which she uses to interact with the outside world.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: While she points out "to err is human," her patience for Miyuki's constant screw ups is limited.

    Kevin Winnicot (SPOILERS

Kevin Winnicot / Red Testament

Voiced by: Hideo Ishikawa (games) and Ryohei Nakao (anime) in Japanese and Kirk Baily (Episode I), Christopher Corey Smith (Episode II), Yuri Lowenthal (Episode III), and Xero Reynolds (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kevin_86.png

The former head of the Third Division, KOS-MOS's original designer, and Shion's fiancé. Deceased at the time the game opens.


  • Back from the Dead: He orchestrated his own demise at the hands of the KOS-MOS archetype in order to become a Testament and help Wilhelm. His reasons for doing so is so that his time with Shion can last forever.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's initially presented to the player as an otherwise upstanding guy who became the innocent victim of circumstance. Hints about his dark side start slipping out as the series progresses until the vernier of likeability is torn clean off halfway through Episode III and you see what a completely messed up domineering creep he really is.
  • The Dog Bites Back: He betrays Wilhelm only when the guy starts to tell him how much he failed at his role in his Evil Plan and tortures Shion by karate chopping his arm off. When that doesn't work, he literally stabs Wilhelm In the Back, killing the both of them so the party can save the universe.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The flashback where Wilhem recruited him as a child showed him hating the universe for his mother's death.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As mutually toxic as his relationship with Shion is, he does legitimately love her. It's just that he believes in following through on Wilhelm's plan more, which leads him to subjecting Shion to absolute hell under the belief that the results will benefit them both.
  • Expy:
    • Largely one for Xenogears's Grahf, a lingering spirit who gave up his physical body in pursuit of the power that he lacked in life to save his beloved Shion (who visually resembles Elly/Sophia). To hammer the parallels further, his E.S. Judah mech and the armor he dons as a solo boss are also visual dead-ringers for Grahf. Just as with Grahf, his dying moments are a Shout-Out to Darth Vader.
    • Kevin also inherits some elements of Krelian, as a Mad Scientist who commits a great deal of atrocities after experiencing a traumatic Freudian Excuse and ultimately receives easy forgiveness for being a Well-Intentioned Extremist from the heroes at the end.
  • Jerkass: Outside of his genuine love for Shion and mentioning that he did love his mother, he's completely heartless and has no moral qualms about any of his actions, even the destruction of Old Miltia. Even then, he's idea of love still doesn't spare Shion from everything he put her through while going along with Whilelm's plan. And he's a rude smug asshole.
  • Knight Templar: Arguing that everything he did was to save Shion's life, even if it meant breaking her and use her.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Kevin becomes a Testament to save Shion, who briefly returns the favor by becoming his minion in a boss fight.
  • Memento MacGuffin/Tragic Keepsake: The pendent his mother gave him right before she gnosified, which he in turn passes on to Shion.
  • Morality Pet: Shion. In scenes without her, he almost comes off as a sociopath, even the fate of Old Miltia doesn't bother him.
  • Pet the Dog: His only acts of on-screen kindness are towards Shion. Otherwise, he's a colossal prick.
  • Posthumous Character: He's already dead by the events of the first episode. Then it's subverted in Episode III when it turns out that his death had been faked and he had been manipulating multiple events as Red Testament.
  • Punny Name: Roth Mantel means Red Cloak
  • Redemption Equals Death: Sort of. After Wilhelm decides to torture Shion for Kevin's failure, Kevin turns on him and takes down Wilhelm before succumbing to his own wounds.
  • Secret Identity: Two of them.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Averted to hell and back: He was a rotten, duplicitous little bastard even as a kid. Heck, he used to be a bad kid by comparison because at least he was a lot better at hiding it as an adult.
  • Yandere: Towards Shion. He's trying to save her, but he's willing to kill anybody who gets his way, or at least sees as in his way, even if they're getting in his way because his plan to save her is making her suffer. Then when she rejects him, he refuses to "hand her over voluntarily", as

    Lt. Luis Virgil 

Lt. Luis Virgil / Blue Testament

Voiced by: Tomokazu Seki in Japanese and Lex Lang in English.

Rank Lieutenant. He is a A.G.W.S. pilot stationed on the Woglinde and a veteran of the Miltian Conflict. A Jerkass who actively insults Shion's optimism and belief that Realians count as people. Is eventually killed by KOS-MOS because he kept getting in line of her fire.


  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Febronia's ghost talks him down from attacking the player party and convinces him to rest in peace with her.
  • Back from the Dead: He becomes the Blue Testament, personality intact. His reason for becoming a Testament is tied into the Miltian Conflict. During the period, he lost his whole squad to Realians and would have died if he didn't get a transplant from a Realian named Febronia, who also took care of Shion. While recovering, the formerly hard-assed soldier eventually softens and the two fall in love. However, when all things went to hell, Febronia died. He blames himself for being too weak and not being able to protect her. Because of this, he rejected love and developed an intense hatred towards Realians. The reason he hates Shion's optimism so much is because she reminds him of Febronia.

    Gaignun Kukai 

Gaignun Kukai

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera (adult) and Mikako Takahashi (child) in Japanese and Crispin Freeman (adult, games), Jennifer Hale (child, Episode II), Wendee Lee (child, Episode III), and John Gremillion (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/download_2311.jpg

The head of the Kukai foundation and actually Jr.'s "brother" of sorts.


    Captain Matthews 

Captain Matthews

Voiced by: Unshō Ishizuka (games) and Kenji Nomura (anime) in Japanese and Kirk Thornton in English

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/matthews.png

The Captain of the Elsa.


  • The Alcoholic: His hat reads "Caution: I am a Boozer. Banzai!"
  • Cast from Hit Points: In the Xenocard mini game, Captain Matthews requires each player spend a card from their deck to the graveyard.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: When Voyager attempts to steal KOS-MOS, Captain Matthews picks up an assault rifle and charges full on.
  • Old Soldier: Was a former Marine and knew Lieutenant Virgil.
  • Perpetual Poverty: Due to his rather astronomical debt.
    chaos: No one has a greater amount of debt than the Captain

    Tony 

Tony

Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu in Japanese and Tony Oliver (Episode I), Henry Dittman (Episode II & III), and Chris Patton (anime) in English.

Hotshot pilot of the Elsa.


  • Ambiguously Bi: Was in a relationship with a woman named Ginevra, but if you speak to her with the right characters she suspects that their relationship fell apart because of Tony cheating on her with male partners (one of whom is implied to be Captain Matthews), in a way that is implied to be more than just paranoia. Tony is upfront about being attracted to both men and women in Xenosaga Freaks, although since it's a parodical spinoff it's also unclear how seriously it's meant to be taken.
  • Camp Straight: Played with. He dresses in a somewhat Macho Camp style with prominent jewelry and his official render has him posing somewhat flamboyantly, but is explicitly shown to be attracted to women. On the other hand, it's heavily implied that he's bisexual and attracted to Captain Matthews, and is confirmed in Japanese-only media to be interesteed in both men and women.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: The first thing he does when he meets Shion is try to hit on her, although he never tries to take it too far.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Tends to bicker with Hammer and Matthews, but is close friends with them nonetheless.

    Hammer 

Hammer

Voiced by: Taiki Matsuno in Japanese and Michael Lindsay (Episode I), Jason Spisak (Episode II & III), and Jessie James Grelle (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hammer_3.png

Tony's childhood friend and the navigator of the Elsa. His hacking skills are reportedly top-notch, and Vector has tried repeatedly to hire him.


  • Expy: Of Hammer from Xenogears, minus the anthropomorphic rat aspects.
  • Playful Hacker: So good that Vector scouted him but he always declined.

    Helmer 

Helmer

Voiced by: Masaru Ikeda in Japanese and Beau Billingslea (Episode I), Stuart Robinson (Episode II) and Keith Szarabajka (Episode III) in English.

Member of Galactic Federation Parliament, representing Second Miltia. A longtime friend of Jr and Gaignun, and Jin's former superior in the military.


  • Bald of Authority: Bald, and a government leader who leverages the power it grants him to help the heroes.
  • Big Good: In the past, he helped facilitate Rubedo and Nigredo's escape from the Miltian Conflict, later co-founding the Kukai Foundation with them under their new identities as Jr. and Gaignun. In the present, he shares the role with Juli as the heroes' most constant ally in the Federation government, wielding his influence at various points to bail them out of trouble or get them where they need to be. Many of the series' antagonists are familiar with him and consider him a noteworthy threat to their plans.
  • The Brigadier: Held the rank of Lieutenant General during his time in the Federation military. Jin, chaos, and Canaan's involvement in the Miltian Conflict was on his orders.
  • Foil: To Dmitri Yuriev. Both men are powerful members of the Federation government who were deeply involved with the Miltian Conflict. However while Dmitri uses his authority mostly for his own selfish ends, Helmer is always seeking to use his to benefit others, in service of the greater good.

    Mary and Shelley 

Mary and Shelley Godwin

A pair of sisters rescued from cruel experimentation by a pharmaceutical company by the Kukai Foundation. They serve as Gaignun and Jr.'s secretaries and seconds-in-command.


    Dr. Juli Mizrahi 

Dr. Juli Mizrahi

Voiced by: Naomi Shindo in Japanese and Carolyn Hennesy (Episode I), Kim Mai Guest (Episode II & III), and Tiffany Grant (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/julimizrahi.jpg

A politician and scientist who is MOMO's legal guardian and Joachim's widow. She is the Contact Subcommittee's Dedicated Representative to the Federation Government and is introduced when she hires Ziggy on its behalf.


  • Ascended Extra: She gets more and more screentime in each Episode.
  • Big Good: She and Helmer are the only major politicians who are unambiguously on the heroes' side.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Towards MOMO, and Ziggy to a much more subtle extent, who she initially treated like tolls or dolls. Over time, she sees Ziggy more as a dependable man and even takes his advice and becomes more affectionate to MOMO.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Averted in regards to her political career. She helped create and joined the Subcommittee after the Militian Conflict, when her late husband began to be vilified as a mad man.
  • Parents as People: Her relationship with MOMO is complicated to say the least but she's trying to be a good mother for her "second daughter" (as opposed to a clone of her first).
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In Episode III, she urges Shion to rescue KOS-MOS (illegally) from Vector's trash heap.
  • The Stoic: Although polite, she is composed to an almost unsettling degree.

    Sakura Mizrahi 

Sakura Mizrahi

Voiced by: Masumi Asano in Japanese and Tara Strong in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sakurai_6.png

Joachim and Juli's daughter. She inspired the physical appearance of Observational Realians. She was loved dearly by her parents and shared a special bond with Jr.


    Joachim Mizrahi 

Joachim Mizrahi

Voiced by: Keiichi Noda (game) and Hirohiko Kakegawa (anime) in Japanese and William Frederick Knight (Episode I), Ed Cunningham (Episode III), and John Kaiser (anime)

Juli Mizrahi's ex-husband, father of Sakura, and creator of MOMO. A Zohar researcher who founded U-TIC.


  • Ambiguously Jewish: Joachim/Jehoiakim is the name of several important figures in the Jewish and Christian Bible, while Mizrahi is an ethnic surname associated with Persian Jews, implying that Joachim is ethnically Jewish. However, shortly before his death he is scene quoting a verse from Revelations, which is specifically part of the Christian New Testament.
  • Mad Scientist: Responsible for the creation of multiple superweapons and MacGuffins such as the Zohar Emulators, as well as the founder of the U-TIC terrorist organization, and he is also responsible for bringing the Gnosis into the world and the destruction of Old Miltia as a result of his obsession with the Zohar. As it turns out, this trope is subverted, as he originally created U-TIC with noble goals in mind until it was perverted by men such as Sellers. Likewise, it was in fact Shion's despair at her mother's death that led to the arrival of the Gnosis; Joachim only sealed Old Miltia away as a Heroic Sacrifice in order to prevent the damage from spreading to the rest of the galaxy.
  • Meaningful Name: He was widely believed and as it turns out, falsely to be a madman responsible for some of the setting's greatest atrocities, who fell to his death after the Gnosis he let into Old Miltia attacked the building he was standing on. His namesake King Jehoiakim was similarly regarded as a tyrant who died with his reputation in dishonor and had his body thrown over the walls of Jerusalem without burial after his death.

    U-DO 

U-DO

Voiced by: Hikaru Midorikawa in Japanese and Doug Erholtz in English.

Pronounced "oo-doo". It's an acronym for Unus-Mundus Drive Operation. Despite the deception, it is not a computer program.

An indescribably powerful and alien entity, U-DO is an Energy Being that lives in UMN space, discovered by Dimitri Yuriev. Able to drive people insane through mental contact alone, it is a malevolent creature with no regard for humans...

Except for the part where all that turns out to be boldface fabrications by Yuriev. While it does drive people insane-see Albedo-this is mostly accidental on its part. In reality, it is the sentient avatar of the mind of the universe, a Gnostic God who possesses a benign, scientific interest in humans. Unfortunately, its mind is so powerful it literally destroys the minds of most people it attempts to contact. As shown throughout its interviews with Shion in game #3, it seeks to understand the goals and psychology of humans and the nature of the universe. To do that, it created two observational units-Abel, a Fei Expy who gathers information in physical space, and Abel's Ark, a colossal-star system sized-living ship who observes spiritual space. It is an important element in all three games.


  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Being from a higher dimension means it has difficulty understanding humans, but it wants to move past that any harm it does cause is unintentional.
  • Brown Note: Coming into contact with U-DO drives people insane. Albedo wasn't nearly as Ax-Crazy before he made contact with it. The exact effects is the individual learning what U-DO has seen. Namely, isolation enough to drive a person mad and the end of the universe.
  • Cool Ship: Abel's Ark, which is absolutely fuggin' huge, having a solar system as an interior decoration.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Jr's backstory and the nature of the Gnosis lead one to think that U-DO is one those things Man Was Not Meant To Know Subverted. It's simply a completely alien existence from a higher dimension. It's curious about humans in a scientific way.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: Like the Wave Existence from Xenogears, it's a stand in for the Monad of Gnosticism, the first god from which the lesser, false gods (like Wilhelm) are created.
  • Eldritch Abomination: It's an extra-dimensional being that causes insanity and fear in those that come into contact with it. Benign or not, it's still Yog-Sothoth lite.
  • Expy: of the Wave Existence from Xenogears, except more ambiguously on the side of good this time.
  • God in Human Form: Well, God In Human And Cool Ship Form, anyhow.
  • God Is Flawed: A benign entity who wants to do good, but coming into contact with it tends to have very bad side effects.
  • God Is Good: Despite being an Eldritch Abomination who has difficulty understanding human morality, it wants to understand humans and wants to do good. But God Is Flawed, and its actions cause harm and it doesn't even realize it.
  • Intrigued by Humanity: It wants to understand how humans think and feel. It tries to find out by creating observational units and talking with them.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: U-DO is...ridiculously hard to quantify, but the best way to think of it is as a passive observer from a higher dimension, while everything happening in the games in the lower dimension is like a book the observer is peacefully reading and enjoying. When humans, like Dmitri Yuriev, Klaus, and scientists who developed the UMN began to tinker with the dimensional membrane, they also interacted with U-DO in a way letters on a paper aren't meant to. At that point, the passive observer has two options: Put it down and find another book, or try and "fix" the one they are reading. U-DO essentially took a pen to the book and began scribbling all over it to try and "fix" the narrative, but it simply made it worse; i.e., the Gnosis. Abel is the passive observer's attempt to insert a brand new character into the narrative using the books own format, once again in an attempt to understand what is happening and try to fix it. In this particular tale, it isn't just U-DO that is the unwitting instigator, but just about everyone who crossed the threshold. The two sides are simply not meant to interact, no matter the intentions.

    Andrew Cherenkov 

Andrew Cherenkov

Voiced by: Hisao Egawa in Japanese and Paul St. Peter (games) and John Swasey (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/andrew2.png


  • Dark and Troubled Past: What we see of his past shows that it was terrible. It wasn't until he met Margulis off all people, that it started to get better.
  • Expy: He is pretty much Ramsus from Xenogears, and shares many aspects of his design and his origin as a Designer Baby. Neither like to be called 'garbage' either.

Antagonists

    Albedo 

Albedo Piazzolla / White Testament

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera in Japanese and Crispin Freeman in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Albedo_7949_1627.jpg

The extremely creepy and Axe-Crazy recurring villain who delights in tormenting Jr. He has an obsession with MOMO that goes above and beyond seeking the data locked inside her.


  • Ax-Crazy: (Even Margulis is is disturbed by him). Also one of the most pure examples of "crazy" in media. Most of the time, Ax-Crazy is simply extremely vicious sociopaths with little regard to human life. Albedo personifies the truly insane elements by making semi-coherent references to various works, often randomly and with the loosest relevance to the current issue and has a warped pattern of speech ("I am the ultimate telomerase!" when he's referencing his immortality). To be fair, though, this is due to being corrupted by U-DO.
  • Back from the Dead: No less than three times in Episode II, for a given amount of "dead."
  • Big Brother Attraction: Extremely clingy towards Jr. to the point of despising Sakura for stealing his heart from him. In the present day he taunts Jr. using overtly romantic language to boot.
  • Big "NO!": Does one when he finds out he's immortal and will outlive his brothers... and then he hugs Rubedo...
  • Bilingual Bonus: He makes a cool pun in French at one point, using "pêche" to refer to MOMO - pêche and momo mean "Peach" in French and Japanese, respectively - and then calls himself a "péché," meaning "sin."
  • Black Cloak: Although it is technically white, the usage and effect is the same.
  • Blessed with Suck: His immortality.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Even to Ormus he mostly seen as Necessarily Evil.
  • Death Seeker: All he thinks he wants is for Jr. to kill him at last.
  • Demoted to Extra: In Episode III
  • Disc-One Final Boss: He is the last boss fight on the first disc of Episode II.
  • Doppelganger Link: Although all the URTVs can communicate telepathically, the link between Jr. and Albedo is especially strong, with Jr. even able to sense when Albedo is reduced to particles.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Albedo firing Proto Merkabah at Second Militia definitely qualifies. Also, this trope is a part of what he wants, overall, since he wants to link up with U-DO again so badly. Also, commenting on his first link up with U-DO...
    Albedo: I experienced but a fragment of my true power that day. The waves that inundated my body, are now a part of me. I've reached a higher stage of existence, compared to you incomplete mortals. I am the Alpha AND the Omega of perfect consciousness!
  • Establishing Character Moment: While he's featured in several scenes beforehand, which notably showed that even Margulis is disturbed by him and wasn't bothered by the destruction of an entire planet, Albedo's infamous Mind Rape scene is this in spades.
  • Evil Laugh: Albedo's even dwarfs Kefka's in sheer insanity. Kefka's was jolly, jovial wickedness. Albedo's is the kind of thing you'd expect to hear in a mental institution. It's safe to say Albedo's runs laps around Kefka's and has energy (and lunacy) to spare.
  • Evil Twin: To Jr more-so than Gaignun as Jr. and Albedo were conjoined twins.
  • Evil Tastes Good: "Feed me your hostility! Pierce me with your hatred!"
  • Foil: To both Gaignun and Jr.
  • Expy: Sociopathic, a God of raw martial arts, and has a Freudian complex with another side of "himself". He's essentially Id as a separate individual.
  • From a Single Cell: Technically, from a single particle.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Twice; first one was when he learned that his brothers lack his infinite regeneration and could die, and the second is when he came into contact with U-DO.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Frankly, having Albedo die from tearing his head off would've saved MOMO from the carnival of Body Horror. It's just not one of those games.
  • Healing Factor: Arguably his defining characteristic.
  • The Heavy: In Episode 1, after the Gnosis attack the Kukai Foundation he pretty takes over as the main antagonist.
  • The Hedonist: His quest is to tap into U-DO again and to be killed by Jr. and, arguably, to then be reunited with Jr.
  • I Can Not Self Terminate: No, seriously. He can (and does) blow off his own head (repeatedly) and survive without a scratch.
  • I Thought Every One Could Do That: Assumed that the other URTVs had a Healing Factor like he, which fueled some of his more violent early behavior since he thought they couldn't die like him. When he learned they couldn't...
  • Large Ham: A pretty damn terrifying one given how it shows how batshit insane he is.
  • Laughing Mad: Especially as a kid.
  • Manipulative Bastard: He is able to make both MOMO and Jr. dance to his tune, usually by predicting their responses with near perfect accuracy.
  • Mind Rape: Is very fond of this when around MOMO and Jr.
  • Redemption Equals Death: He does this three times and every time it looks like he's gone for good; however, he just won't stay dead— He's molecularly reassembled by the Testaments, killed again by Jr., brought back as a Testament himself and dies again when his mind is absorbed by Jr. and his body is obliterated.
  • Required Secondary Powers: His Healing Factor.
  • Start of Darkness: His initial Freak Out when learning that everyone he knew would grow old and die and he stay alive forever.
  • Straw Nihilist: You'd be pretty damn nihilistic too if you were so unkillable that'd you'd get to see the heat death of the universe first-hand and got a preview of it from the local cosmic entity.
  • Suicide by Cop: He Can Not Self Terminate, so he repeatedly attempts to provoke Jr. into killing him.
  • Terms of Endangerment: His frequent referral to MOMO as Ma belle péche or a variant of said phrase, typically while he is digging into her mind.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Getting limbs shoot off, and even loses his head doesn't bother him.
    "This pain. It's SO GOOD! SO GOOOOD!"
  • White Hair, Black Heart: White hair. Is a total psycho.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Albedo has infinite regeneration, meaning he absolutely cannot die. Even if he is reduced to mere particles. Needless to say, upon learning that his brothers lack this regeneration, he takes it very badly. It goes From Bad to Worse after contact with U-DO.
  • Wicked Cultured: Tosses literary references left and right in some of his more prominent scenes. Played with too; the way he makes references doesn't make him seem so much as "cultured" as completely insane.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He started to get unhinged learning that everybody he'd either spend life along or watching everybody he knew die of old age. Then he came into contact with U-DO, and what's worse, Jr. panicked and left him and the other URTVs to it.
  • Yandere: Towards his brother Rubedo. His clinginess towards him in his adult years is rife with sexual innuendos of a Stalker with a Crush sort, and he admits to having despised Sakura (and by extension MOMO) to the point of accusing her of being a seductress because he was afraid she would take some of Rubedo's attention from him.
  • You Are Number 6: He is URTV #667.
  • Your Head Asplode: Repeatedly but to little effect.

    Margulis 

Margulis

Voiced by: Joji Nakata in Japanese and Michael McConnohie (games) and Andy McAvin (anime) in English

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/margulis_3320.jpg

The Grand Inquisitor of the Ormus religion, Margulis is ultimately only answerable to the Ormus Pope. He seeks the Zohar as a source of power and a relic of his religion. He is driven by a fiery faith, which ultimately burns himself as often as it smites his enemies.


  • Badass Normal: Margulis is to the villains as Jin is to the heroes in regards to this trope; he's an ordinary swordsman amongst Reality Warpers and he still puts out a good showing.
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: To Jin, despite the fact that Jin didn't really want to kill Margulis in the first place.
  • BFS: His ES carries one that's longer than it is tall.
  • Blood Knight: He enjoys his fights, which are among the few times in the series he seems to enjoy himself.
  • Colonel Badass: Originally a colonel in the Federation military (hence the Badass Long Coat field uniform in the above picture) and still continues to be a badass.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: He's always second-in-command to the leader of Ormus, whoever it maybe from one moment to the next, yet he's always the one giving the orders. Until he suddenly isn't.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: While he's not bothered by sacrificing lives for his goals (read, whole planets), he apparently has a distaste for torture, since he refers to Albedo as having "perverse taste in hobbies."
  • Evil Counterpart: To Jin. Compare their styles: Jin fights without losing his cool while Margulis fights like The Berserker. Jin uses a Katana while Margulis uses a straight double-edged sword. During their dual, Margulis seems to have superior physical prowess while Jin is better at Ether-based attacks. Jin, and Shion by extension, have the blood of the People of the Zohar, which qualifies them to join Ormus. Jin didn't join while Margulis whole-heartedly embraced Ormus' teachings.
  • Evil Redhead: In the more realistic almost brownish-red style.
  • Flash Step: Displays the when fighting Jin and also in a flashback with Cherenkov when the two first met when dodging an attack from him and then knocking him with a karate chop.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Get's a scar from one of his fights with Jin.
  • Gray-and-Gray Morality: Margulis is not strictly evil, and his greivences with the Federation are legitimate, especially the destruction of Michtam.
  • Persona Non Grata: Originally a colonel in the Federation military (hence the Badass Long Coat field uniform in the above picture), he was revealed as a traitor at the climax of the Miltian Conflict and is now a wanted criminal, unable to return to Federation space. This is the reason he's usually only seen on Ormus ships/battlestations or on dead worlds like Michtam and Old Miltia.

    Patriarch Sergius XVIII 

Patriarch Sergius XVII

Voiced by: Chikao ÅŒtsuka in Japanese and Michael Bell in English.

In public, Patriarch Sergius is the head of the galaxy's largest quasi-legal religion, the Immigrant Fleet; in private he's also the head of Ormus, the galaxy's largest religious terrorist cult. He is the immediate superior to much of the series's antagonists, namely Margulis, Pellegri, Sellers, and Heinlien.


  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: He destroys Old Miltia by having the Ω System rip its way out of the planet's crust. Though Milita was uninhabited at the time, he is responsible for the largest amount of physical damage of all the villains until Wilhelm kicks off the Apocalypse at the end of Episode III.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": In Episode II, anyway. Margulis mentions him by name only in passing in Episode III.
  • Evil Old Folks: He is the oldest-looking character in the series. The chronologically-oldest characters have him beat by gigayears. One of them is in your party, and has been alive since at least Jesus' time.
  • First Church of Mecha: Ormus worships the Zohar as a holy relic and uses numerous religious-themed Humongous Mechas as part of their arsenal, including one that actually is a church. And then there's his own personal Deus Est Machina: Proto-Ω.
  • Light Is Not Good: As the head of a major religion, he dresses all in white, has light-based attacks and an army of angelic super robots. His base of operations even looks like a space cathedral. He is also a genocidal maniac.
  • Out-Gambitted: By Wilhelm, spectacularly.
  • Properly Paranoid: Is convinced that Margulis is plotting against him despite his apparent loyalty. He's right.

    Wilhelm 

Wilhelm

Voiced by: Nobuyuki Hiyama in Japanese and Richard Cansino (Episode I), Jason Spisak (Episode II & III), and Vic Mignogna (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Wilhelm_6373.jpg

The head of Vector Industries, the largest corporation in existence. It is also revealed that he heads up the second largest company, Hyams and the religious organization Ormus. He has some sort of connection to chaos (the guy) and commands the Testaments.


  • Agony Beam: One of the few 'offensive' powers we see him using, which Shion was on the receiving end of.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: It's heavily implied that Wilhelm was either Emperor Nero or Tiberius.
  • Big Bad: The one and only, though the "bad" part is debatable.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: He exists solely to prevent the destruction of the Lower Domain. He does not care for how many lives must be lost to achieve this goal.
  • The Chessmaster: Is he ever. Having a perfect probability prediction machine and being practiced at repeating patterns for several hundred time loops does wonders for abilities as a schemer.
  • Cosmic Entity: Created specifically by the Collective Subconscious to ensure the survival of the Lower Domain of the universe... at any cost.
  • Determinator: So it will take several thousand years of manipulating mankind to achieve Eternal Recurrence? No sweat. It's not like he hasn't done it before or anything.
  • Deus ex machina: He acted as one for the protagonists in the ending sequence. Because the UMN had shut down, they had no way of getting away from Michtam quickly enough. Wilhelm created a gate so they could.
  • Dissonant Serenity: Wilhelm, all the time. The most emotive he ever gets is a simple gasp when he realizes his Gambit Roulette just backfired... maybe.
  • Expy: Of Miang from Xenogears. As far as the galaxy is concerned he's just the CEO of a major corporation, as well as a former Galaxy Federation chairman, but he's actually an ancient immortal being manipulating the characters and all of history just to bring him the pieces he needs to assemble Zarathustra and trigger Eternal Recurrence. Though unlike with Miang, it's clear almost immediately to the audience that Wilhelm is more than he appears.
  • Fiction 500: He may be one of the wealthiest characters in the history of fiction, owning a company whose headquarters qualifies as an artificial planet.
    • Interestingly enough, he actually manages to subvert the more prominent elements of this in a roundabout way. To note:
      • Despite his status of being the CEO of Vector, very few people even seem to be aware of him (let alone of him having any status of being rich). For all intents and purposes, his office (which is a small room) on the Dämmerung seems to double as his "house."
      • He is rarely (if ever) seen buying anything for personal want (let alone things that would have insane prices).
      • He funds things in his interest under the name of "Vector" rather than personally funding. This is a fair bit believable given Vector's history, scope and size. On the other hand, whenever he needs something built, he simply uses the various divisions of Vector and manipulates events in such a way that the products built have seemingly little to no relation to him. The stuff built is all relatively possible given the science used in the verse.
      • The only times he defies physics is when he's literally defying the laws of physics, which never has anything to do with money or Rule of Funny/Cool.
  • Foil: To chaos (the person). And to a lesser extent, Mary Magdalene.
  • Gambit Roulette: This may be one of the very few times this trope is justified, since he has possession of a device called the Compass of Order and Chaos, which shows him the movements of consciousness. Being several thousand years old probably doesn't hurt, either.
    • He also has practically absolute control over the economy due to being the CEO of Vector and Hyams, as well as being a high-ranking Cardinal in Ormus. He was also head of the government a decade before the game takes place, giving him significant clout with the Federation.
    • His schemes are directly implied to have resulted in all of the Xenoblade games through pushing Dimitri into direct conflict with Klaus, resulting in the attack on the space station and Klaus activating the Zohar/Conduit. This caused Lost Jerusalem to be, well, lost.
  • Graceful Loser: Beating Zarathustra convinces him there's a chance that Eternal Recurrence isn't necessary, and he fades away contentedly.
  • Judge, Jury, and Executioner: He prefers not to get his own hands dirty, but if he needs somebody offed, he's more than willing to sic a Testament on them.
  • Lean and Mean: Compared to contemporaries in the Xenosaga rogues gallery, he's a little on the thin side.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Played with. He's well-dressed, immaculately groomed, and certainly wealthy, but he rarely if ever indulges in personal luxuries, aside from chess, opera music, and in one scene, wine.
  • Meaningful Name: His name is a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche, to emphasize how much his morality has in common with his namesake.
  • Necessarily Evil: Once Shion realizes just what it was he was doing (or rather, trying to prevent), she recognizes him as this.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: The closest we see to him actually fighting is the aforementioned use of an Agony Beam.
  • The Stoic: If he has any emotions, the best we'll ever hear of it is him literally stating it.
  • Time Abyss: He is at least 4000 years old. Supplementary material suggests not only has he been around since the birth of the universe, he's been going around the Stable Time Loop an uncountable number of times prior to Shion and KOS-MOS sabotaging Zarathustra. So it's possible Wilhelm is quadrillions of years old, probably even more.
  • Ãœbermensch: Considering the Nietzsche subtitles and that Nietzsche's middle name was Wilhelm, this is not surprising.
  • The Unfought: The only time he acts directly against you, he's upstaged by his own mecha being possessed by Gnosis, and you beating it convinces him that you're right to oppose him.
  • Walking Spoiler: Just in case all of the spoiler tags weren't enough of a clue.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: His goal is to save the universe.
  • Wicked Cultured: Likes to refer to all the events happening as if it were an opera, apparently listens to Wagner a lot, is never seen in anything other than a plain business suit and plays chess. Apparently, a whole freaking lot. He also has some elaborate and poetic titles for certain people and features ("shining wills" and refers to the White Testament as the "Weaver of the Eternal Circle of Zarathustra").

    Pellegri 

Pellegri

Voiced by: Eriko Hara in Japanese and Kari Wahlgren (games) and Christine Auten (anime) in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pellegri_5881.jpg

Margulus' subordinate within Ormus. Unlike her superior, she seems to have flashes of conscience about the paths they walk, but not enough to make her reconsider her choices. She has a past with Jin.


  • Dating Catwoman: She and Jin were lovers in the past. They still have feelings for each other.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: She protests the fact that so many lives (1.5 billion) were lost on Ariadne.
  • Faux Affably Evil: According to the Episode III database, her reasonable demeanor is a facade.
  • Heroic BSoD: Post-Ariadne Incident, her attitude had changed.
  • Knight Templar: Not as much as Margulis, but enough to cause friction with Jin.
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: She becomes an active antagonist in Episode II after Margulis gives her ES Isachaar to pilot.
  • The Mole: Just like Margulis, she was an Ormus mole in the Federation military at the time of the Miltian Conflict (as evidenced by her picture above wearing a Federation uniform).
  • Satellite Character: To Margulis in Episode I.

    Dr. Dmitri Yuriev 

Dr. Dmitri Yuriev

Voiced by: Osamu Saka in Japanese and Keith Szarabajka in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Dmitri_Yuriev_771_1612.jpg

The "father" and creator of the URTVs. He is obsessed with destroying U-DO for an unknown reason.


  • Deadpan Snarker: He spends most of his screentime in Episode III being a sarcastic asshole even at the most inappropriate moments.
  • Expy: Of Krellian from Xenogears. He's a scientist who extended his own lifespan through technology, experienced a painful trauma in his past that motivates him to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, and has been working to further the plans of the Galaxy Federation all while planning to hijack events for his own personal gain. He has a significantly less sympathetic backstory than Krellian though.
  • The Ghost: He is mentioned in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, but he doesn't appear on-screen.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: What happened when he came into contact with U-DO.
  • Godhood Seeker: Wilhelm notes this as ironic; Yuriev's fear for U-DO, what he thought was God, leads him to attempt to become one.
  • Grand Theft Me: One of the ways he's lived for so long and an acquired skill from contact with U-DO.
  • It's All About Me: Unlike other villains, he's motives are entirely selfish, and doesn't care about anything but himself. He even outright mocks the URTVs who disobey him as failures.

    Citrine 

Citrine

Voiced by: Rena Mizuki in Japanese and Erin Fitzgerald and Stephanie Mitchell (child) in English.

URTV #668, the missing unit between 667 (Albedo) and 669 (Nigredo). One of very few female URTVs produced by the Yuriev Institute, she was groomed from childhood to be Yuriev's personal aide and pointwoman for the Salvator Faction.


  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Her dad is Dimitri Yuriev, after all. He consider all his "children" to be extensions of his own will.
  • Ninja Maid: To Yuriev.
  • Opposite-Sex Clone: She was created mostly from Yuriev's X-chromosome and the use of the surrogate mother. Justified, as the female URTVs were needed to preserve the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Yuriev, again.

    Dr. Sellers 

Dr. Sellers

Voiced by: Masaharu Sato in Japanese and Steve Blum in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/123454321asdgdsaerdcx_8768.png

One of the brightest scientific minds in the post-Miltian Conflict galaxy. Dr. Sellers is known as much for his intellect as he is for his shifting loyalties.


  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: It's probably easier to list the people he hasn't screwed over. He freely admits to this when Jin calls him on it; he'll jump onto whichever ship takes him closer to his destination.
  • Cool Shades: Described as "motorized sunglasses" in the Episode I database. They're apparently bolted to his face.
  • The Dragon: To Yuriev in Episode III.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: He's not even named in-game when he shows up in Episode I for a minute or two. His proper introduction comes at the start of Episode II.
  • Evil Brit: One of the villains, and speaks with a sinister British accent courtesy of Steve Blum in the English dub .
  • Evil Laugh: Does a little evil chuckle in his last scene.
  • Genius Cripple: A self-made example. He ruined Joachim Mizrahi's life, so Mizrahi shot his kneecaps off.
  • Jerkass: He's mean, rude, inconsiderate and disrespectful.
  • Knee-capping: Mouth off to Joachim Mizrahi, kiss your legs good bye.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's named and modeled after Peter Sellers' performance in Dr. Strangelove.
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product: He openly admits his life's work is nothing but this, with his inspiration being Mizrahi's works.
  • Sinister Shades: Wears a pair of dark goggles and is a completely amoral scientist.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: He's one of the few dangling threads the series left behind, as he's never actually killed on screen and his final fate is left unspoken.
  • You Are Too Late: He whips this out only after the fact, telling the party that while they've wasted their time battling their way through Merkabah, Yuriev has invaded The Durandal, and they're probably too late to do anything about it.

    Voyager 

Voyager / Black Testament

Voiced by: Kouji Tsujitani in Japanese and D.C. Douglas in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Voyager_678_7223.jpg

The black testament, who has some sort of connection with Ziggy.


  • Bald of Evil: Shows he has a pretty hairless head when his hood is down, and he's the most brutal Testament.
  • The Cracker: Before he became a supernatural monster he was a Ghost in the Shell-inspired cyber-terrorist with whom Ziggy tangled during his days as a policeman.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: In III delivers one to the entire cast until KOS-MOS reawakens from her repairs after the fight with Telos.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Downplayed, like Yuriev; his Start of Darkness was contacting U-DO and fully understanding the temporary nature of human life. However, he remained rational, just becoming a cruel Immortality Seeker to deal with his own fear of mortality.
  • Hate Sink: Unlike the other Testaments, there is nothing sympathetic about Voyager, and people grow to despise him the more they learn about him.
  • Hollywood Hacking: Famous for this hacking pre-Testament.
  • Mind over Matter: His main form of attack is telekinetically throwing things at people or freezing them in place.
  • Serial Killer: Was this before he became a Testament, obsessed with using death as a way to somehow escape it himself. He isn't now, but mostly because he's immortal already, rather than any change in his morality.
  • The Starscream: He wanted Wilhelm's power for himself. Wilhelm saw this coming a mile away.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy : He thought that the Compass of Order and Chaos was the source of Wilhelm's power, and thus all he had to do was sneak into his office and take it for himself. Too bad not only was this the opposite the truth, but Wilhelm is literally the only person who can use it due to the fact that it is used to observe the entire collective subconscious, i.e. the 'overmind' of all humanity. Turns out the reason he just leaves it there is because anyone dumb enough to try taking and/or using it would be Mind Raped to death.

    T-elos 

T-elos

Voiced by: Mariko Suzuki in Japanese and Bridget Hoffman in English.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/telos_4514.jpg

A humanoid weapon system built on the same principles as KOS-MOS, and vastly more powerful. She states that she must destroy KOS-MOS in order to be complete.


  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: T-elos is cruel and sadistic, compared to KOS-MOS's logical indifference or protectiveness.
  • Ax-Crazy: She's violent and destructive. She makes it clear to Shion that the only reason she survives her encounters is because Kevin gave orders not to kill her, which didn't exclude hurting her.
  • Breakout Character: Aside from KOS-MOS, T-elos is easily the most recognizable Xenosaga character, having gone on to appear alongside KOS-MOS in other media.
  • BFG: Her gattling gun.
  • Came Back Wrong: She's the forcibly reanimated and cybernetically enhanced corpse of Mary Magdalene. It doesn't get much more wrong than that. Her mere existence is yet another drop in the bucket of "irredeemable asshole" that is Kevin Winnicot.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: She was briefly mentioned in Episode I. Actually she WAS planned to make appearance since the first game, but she surfaces in the last game.
  • Chest Blaster: Her Phase-Transfer Cannon.
  • Evil Counterpart: To KOS-MOS, although it's a little more complicated than that. It's not just their personalities that's flipped, but pretty much everything along with a play on words. KOS-MOS is right-handed (dexterous, implying skill and effectiveness) while T-elos is left (sinister, implying cruelty). Despite that, she never displays any signs that she'll disobey her creator.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Quite.
    "Return to dust so that I may truly... AWAKEN!"
    "After Mary fulfills her duty, ZARATHUSTRA SHALL SPEAK!!"
    "BE GONE!!"
  • Foil: To KOS-MOS and Mary Magdelene.
  • Lack of Empathy: Even more so than KOS-MOS in Episode I as KOS-MOS acts as she was commanded. The scary part is that T-elos emotes much more than KOS-MOS.
  • Nigh-Invulnerable: Gets through the first encounter without a scratch on her, and in the second, the only time she reasct to getting hit by anything is when she's blasted KOS-MOS's own Phase Transfer Cannon.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to KOS-MOS and Mary's Blue.
  • Robot Girl: Averted since she has Mary Magdelene's original body.
  • Significant White Hair, Dark Skin: Unlike the pale KOS-MOS, T-elos has dark skin as a result of being an 80% organic cyborg whose true identity is the revived corpse of Mary Magdalene of Bible fame, and thus her skin color reflects her Middle Eastern ancestry. Her hair wasn't always white, and seems to be a result of the process of her unnatural conversion into a cyborg.

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