This is the characters page for Deca-Dence. Beware of Spoilers after the 1st episode.
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Main Characters
In General
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Their dynamic.
- Spanner in the Works: As a bug, Natsume threatens the normal functioning of Deca-dence and its carefully crafted events. Kaburagi is also this as he not only refuses to delete her from the system, he does everything he can to protect her even if it leads to catastrophic results.
Natsume
Voiced by: Tomori Kusunoki (Japanese), Trina Nishimura (English)
As a Tanker
The protagonist of the series, Natsume is a young girl who dreams of exterminating the Gadoll threat and bringing peace to the world of Deca-Dence. In truth, she and the rest of the humans are labeled as NPC by Deca-dence's system, with her being a bug at that, threatening the smooth operation of the game through being an extremely determined glitch.- An Arm and a Leg: She lost her right arm in a Gadoll attack when she was a child.
- Arm Cannon: Post-upgrade, Natsume's mechanical hand now has five fingers and can transform into a harpoon launcher.
- Artificial Limbs: Natsume lost her right arm when she was young. It was replaced with a prosthetic that only has three fingers and much less finesse and control than a normal hand. Kaburagi later remodels it to have a full five-finger layout for improved dexterity while allowing the prosthesis to double as a needle launcher.
- Cuteness Proximity: She absolutely loves Pipe after seeing how cute he is!
- Decoy Protagonist: While the first episode sets her up as the protagonist from the second episode on the story follows Kaburagi's story more. She's still important, but more on the level of deuteragonist than the protagonist.
- Determinator: Natsume's best asset is her unflagging will to achieve her goals. Lost an arm and has a substandard replacement? She applies for The Power anyway. The Power never got back to her due to an administrative error? After some time resigning herself to cleaning duty under Armor Repair, she takes the first chance she gets to learn how to fight Gadoll. Kaburagi's regime is a textbook example of Training from Hell? Regardless of how many times she's injured, almost drowned, and exhausted, she survives it and becomes a formidable fighter.
- Despair Event Horizon: After episode 5 when she sees how the "Final Battle Against the Gadoll" was completely pointless, she starts to feel that everything is pointless and is dangerously close to giving up.
- Disappeared Dad: Natsume's father died when she was younger during a Gadoll attack that ended up costing her right arm.
- Drives Like Crazy: While she's mostly competent the only time she's shown driving, once she hits the brakes just outside of the fortress to help Kaburagi get it to move. She winds up flipping the humvee she and the other cyborgs are into a summersault and a roll before landing it back on its tires.
- Hot-Blooded: Get in the way of her dreams and she’ll get loud in your face.
- Hunter of Monsters: Her dream is to see the world permanently rid of the Gadoll threat and she's perfectly willing to get up on the frontlines to help by any means necessary.
- Kid Hero: She's 17 but can easily pass as much younger, and is one of the protagonists of the story.
- Kid Hero All Grown-Up: In the Distant Finale, she's visibly much older, has grown her hair out longer, and wears a new, much more colorful outfit with a jacket, likely a consequence in the boom in peaceful leisure-time activities and because of her new job as a tour guide.
- Mentor's New Hope: Enough that her existence keeps Kaburagi from committing suicide.
- Only Mostly Dead: Natsume clinically died during the Gadoll attack that took her arm. Though the medical staff was quickly able to revive her before she could experience brain death, her tracking chip nonetheless registered her as dead and deactivated accordingly, rendering her an untrackable bug in the system.
- Plucky Girl: In spite of the constant trauma, suffering, and cruel twists she faces throughout the series nothing seems to be able to break her spirit or her happy, idealistic views.
- Spanner in the Works: The malfunction of her chip means that, unlike any other Tanker, she's completely untraceable by the System.
- Unperson: Her tracking chip malfunctioned and logged her as dead to the System years ago while she's still well and alive. This prevents the administration from keeping track of her and corralling her actions, and Kaburagi, the only one who knows this, certainly isn't in any rush to remove her from the game.
Kaburagi
Voiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese), Gabe Kunda (English)
As a Tanker
Click here to see his Cyborg Form
Click here to see his Ranker Form
The deuteragonist of the series, Kaburagi is an old, veteran tanker who is Natsume's boss and eventually, mentor. In truth, he is part of the A.I.s that serve the System that runs the world of Deca-Dence as an MMO. Though he is supposed to be a "bug hunter" and is aware of Natsume's status as one, he refuses to delete her from the system in an attempt to break free of the endless grim cycle of Deca-dence.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin used to be orange as a Ranker, and in his cyborg form in real life it appears to be turquoise.
- Back from the Dead: Despite sacrificing himself to kill the mutant colossal Gadoll, Jill remembers she made a backup of his data thus she and Minato are able to bring Kaburagi back to life.
- Boring, but Practical: He was seen as such back as a Ranker. While forum commenters regularly complained that he was pretty boring to watch, his no-frills approach consistently placed him in the top three players of Deca-Dence.
- The Cynic: Kaburagi doesn't have a very bright outlook on the world and thinks Natsume shouldn't have many hopes to improve the world. Fitting, considering he's seen the "Final Battle Against the Gadoll" happen again and again over the course of decades.
- Cyborg: Of the human brain in an otherwise entirely robot body variety.
- Driven to Suicide: Since his teammate was killed, Kaburagi has been gradually starving himself to death. His discovery of Natsume's status as a bug in the system breaks him out of it, since he finds new purpose in helping her survive.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the final episodes, Kabu logs into Deca-Dence and then removes his limiter to kill the mutant colossal Gadoll. This damages Deca-Dence that he's buried under the collapsing rumble.
- Morphic Resonance: He retains his spiky "hair"/hair across his cyborg, gear, and tanker forms.
- My Greatest Failure: For Kaburagi, telling Mikey how to release his avatar's limits and leading to him getting disassembled.
- Punch-Clock Villain: He works as a bug hunter, tasked with identifying bugs to be fixed (i.e. problematic humans that need to be killed) and retrieving their tracking chips to be recycled.
- Really 700 Years Old: Kaburagi's human form is designed to appear 42, the real cyborg is at least over a hundred years old.
- Retired Badass: Kaburagi is a forcibly retired Ranker. His skills have yet to dull even after all the years, however, and he's perfectly capable of training Natsume and defending her from any threats beyond her capabilities.
- Vocal Dissonance: He has the exact same low voice in his cutesy cyborg body as he does in his Tanker avatar.
Cyborgs
Gears
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Some Gears have green, blue, or purple skin color. This is because they're essentially RPG avatars and one episode even has Natsume see a "Skin Shop" though she doesn't understand what it actually is. Their true forms also come in a wide variety of colors.
- Creature-Hunter Organization: As far as the humans are aware. Their government, the Power, is responsible for fighting the Gadoll threat, by training, arming, and providing incentives for the Gears and the Tankers who join them.
- Proud Warrior Race: The humans are led to believe they are descended from a race who are genetically engineered to fight the Gadoll and are very enthusiastic about their jobs. In truth, they're player avatars in an MMO.
- Remote Body: All of them are avatars that the Solid Quake Corporation's cyborgs control from their home and workplace, a spaceship hovering over the Eurasian continent.
Deca-Dence Administrative Staff
Hugin and Munin
Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (Japanese), Barry Yandell (English)
Hugin
Munin
The two chief content administrators of Deca-Dence, responsible for ensuring the vast entertainment project keeps running smoothly without interference from 'bugs'. To the cyborg players controlling the Gears, they are judge, jury, and executioner.- Amazing Technicolor Population: Hugin's gear avatar's skin is the same violet as his cyborg body's face.
- Animal Motif: Ravens. Hugin and Munin are named after Odin's ravens, Hugin has a long, beaklike nose and hunched build as both a cyborg and a Gear, and Munin's Gear body is a raven.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Both Hugin and Munin work together as the main antagonists of the series, though Hugin seems to be leader of the two, until Munin reveals himself to be The Man Behind the Man.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Regardless of what form they're in, Hugin is the big guy, a massive, intimidating slab that looms over anyone unlucky enough to encounter him, while Munin is the little guy who floats/flies next to him like a pet.
- Catchphrase: "There is no place for bugs in this world."
- The Dividual: As one might expect from their Religious and Mythological Theme Naming, they're always seen together, and tend to behave like a single being with two separate but closely-linked minds.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: It turns out the true administrator of Deca-Dence is actually Munin, whose usually portrayed as Hugin's pet.
- The Dreaded: Meeting these two means that someone has attracted the attention of Solid Quake's most senior and lethal enforcers in the Deca-Dence project. Everyone who knows who they are is terrified of them, and anyone who doesn't know who they are will swiftly learn why they're so terrifying.
- Energy Weapon: Munin has a powerful beam cannon which his Gear body fires from its mouth.
- Evil Old Folks: Hugin's Gear form is a hunch-backed old man with violet skin.
- The Heavy: Hugin and Munin are the heads of content moderation for the Solid Quake MegaCorp's biggest entertainment channel, which just so happens to be a "Truman Show" Plot of uniquely grandiose cruelty. As such, they're the face of the company's oppression for cyborg players and humans alike and the most active and visible villains in the story, but they still have to answer to the company's higher-ups.
- Hero Killer: As Solid Quake's chief enforcers for the Deca-Dence subsidiary, Hugin and Munin are a near-unstoppable force of nature both inside and outside the game, and whenever they show up, the heroes' only options are to run, hide, and/or use trickery to elude them. So far, they've killed Kaburagi's avatar twice.
- Humanoid Abomination: Hugin's Gear form approaches this territory via Clarke's Third Law. He's humanoid but obviously inhuman in appearance thanks to his strangely exaggerated proportions, with impossible speed and strength that he employs in completely unnatural ways - when he moves, for instance, he simply floats forward unnervingly fast without moving his arms or legs an inch. Everything about him screams that he does not play by the usual rules.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He does this to Kaburagi's avatar at his home with his hand. Hugin's avatar ends up on the receiving end shortly after via the metal Gadoll needle from Kaburagi's other avatar.
- Morphic Resonance: Hugin's silhouette is identical as both a cyborg and a Gear: tall, rectangular, head roughly level with his shoulders/"shoulders". He even has the same nose and sunglasses in both forms.
- Meaningful Name: The cyborgs Hugin and Munin are the roving eyes and ears of the System, just as the ravens Hugin and Munin were for Odin in Norse Mythology. As for them as individuals, Hugin ('Thought') is more obviously sapient, while Munin ('Memory') appears to be more directly connected to the System and more knowledgeable about its goals and policies.
- Lack of Empathy: They're the mailed fist of Solid Quake, in charge of hunting down and exterminating troublemakers. Empathy is not in the job description, and neither of them display any of it.
- Large and in Charge: Hugin towers over other cyborgs in both forms, and is one of the two highest-ranked Solid Quake employees they're ever likely to see in person (not that they would ever want to).
- Last Chance to Quit: They gave Kaburagi one more chance to reaffirm his loyalty to the System after he ruins Deca-Dence's current event and the rollout of its next expansion. Kaburagi rejects their offer and it doesn't end well for his avatar.
- Lightning Bruiser: Their Gear forms only exist to eliminate threats to The Masquerade with maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum brutality. Munin simply relies on his powerful beam cannon, but Hugin is one of these taken to an absolute extreme. He moves like he's in permanent fast-forward, and can rip through a human (or Gear) body with a single blow.
- Mood-Swinger: Munin has faces all over his cyborg body which he switches between to indicate his current mood. This happens very rapidly and very often.
- Power Floats: The chief enforcers in the Deca-Dence Project are both equipped with anti-gravity tech that grants them unrivalled mobility at unrivalled speed. Not only that, but even their Gear forms use it to get about (although Munin disguises it with regular crow-like flight).
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the Gadoll factory is destroyed and a powerful final Gadoll is present, Hugin and Mugin decide to bail out, believing that there is no way of salvaging the game now.
- Sinister Shades: Hugin wears dark Triangle Shades in his cyborg form and Gear form.
- Sinister Schnoz: Hugin has a long and narrow nose in both forms.
- The Stoic: Hugin is cold and businesslike at all times, in contrast to the mercurial Munin.
- The Unintelligible: Munin is only ever heard Speaking Simlish in his cyborg form (with each of his many faces having a different voice). His Gear form, meanwhile, is a raven, and simply squawks. Hugin can understand him just fine, though.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: They do this to anyone who threatens the integrity and smooth running of the game, be they human or cyborg. And unfortunately this happens to Kaburagi's avatar after disrupting Deca-Dence's latest event.
Bug Correctional Facility
Donatello
Voiced By: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese), Cris George (English)
- Amazing Technicolor Population: His Gear avatar's skin is purple.
- Arm Cannon: His cyborg form's left hand is a functioning gun, heavily implied to have been a part he should not have kept after being imprisoned.
- Bald of Evil: Subverted, his Gear Avatar has a buzz cut which adds to his menacing, intimidating, and violent personality but he's on Kaburagi's side.
- Blood Knight: More so than the other Gears, he loves fighting and will happily duke it out with Gadoll or his fellow cyborgs, whoever happens to be available.
- Heroic Suicide: For his final act and love of Deca-Dence, he flies towards the final Gadoll with two man-sized rockets and severely damages the Gadoll at the cost of himself. This impressed everyone so much, they started to mourn for him. Although this trope is shortly averted after because he wakes up and it was just his avatar, so naturally everyone was disappointed by the act.
- Large and in Charge: Both his cyborg form and his Gear avatar are much larger than most, and he uses that size and intimidation factor to help keep his gang members in line.
- Morphic Resonance: His left wrist, his fingerless gloves, his green eyes, and the yellow wing patterns remain constant across his old Ranker avatar and his cyborg body.
- Stout Strength: Both his forms are incredibly large, bulky, and equally physically-strong.
Turkey
Voiced by: Yutaka Aoyama (Japanese), Jerry Jewell (English)
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Begs Donatello and Sarkozy to spare him, though they take his pleas of mercy and throw it in shit, literally.
- Asshole Victim: It is unlikely anyone will miss Turkey, given that he was a traitorous jerk.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: His gear avatar's skin is green.
- Animal Motifs: Scorpions. His cyborg form is very insectoid in design and he has a stinger tail.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: He uses his cyborg form's tail as a weapon.
- The Bully: Turkey enjoys tormenting those who are weaker than him.
- Dirty Coward: He arranges his fellow brethren to be slaughtered by the game police just to save his own ass.
- Gonk: His avatar looks very hideous which highlights Turkey's very unpleasant nature.
- Hate Sink: Turkey is an unpleasant coward who betrays his comrades to get pardoned for his crimes. Thus it was immensely satisfying when Donatello throws him to a lake full of shit where Sorkzy blows him up.
- Jerkass: He is a cruel and vicious bully whose rude to everyone. Thus, Jill wasn't surprised to learn that Turkey betrayed them, whom she refers to as "The Biggest Asshole".
- Manipulative Bastard: Turkey exploits Sarkozy's desire to be a hero to manipulate him into join him in betraying their allies.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: After selling out his fellow prisoners and explaining to Sarkozy's face that he was just using him, he ends up thrown into the gadoll excrement processing pit then blown up by Sarkozy's Heroic Suicide.
- The Sociopath: Turkey is completely selfish, constantly lies and manipulates, and shows no remorse for getting people killed.
- The Starscream: When the opportunity presents itself, he doesn't hesitate to sell out Donatello and the rest of the prisoners to get a pardon for himself, even if he has to lie, manipulate, and get cyborgs killed in the process.
- Token Evil Teammate: Unlike the rest of Kaburagi's team, Turkey has no redeeming qualities to speak of and only cares about himself. So its no surprise to anyone when they learned that he betrays them.
- Undignified Death: Getting blown up in water filled with crap is not a dignified way to go out.
Sarkozy
Voiced by: Yuji Ueda (Japanese), Ian Sinclair (English)
- Heroic Suicide: After Turkey betrays the prison riot/escape plan and getting shot and "bleeding" to death, Sarkozvy willingly detonates his oxyone core in the gadoll excrement pit, leading to a massive fireball that wrecks the gadoll production facility above and killing Turkey in the process.
- I Just Want to Be Special: He secretly wishes that he could be a great Gear like Kaburagi and do something that would make him into a hero. Turkey uses this in an attempt to sway Sarkozy to betray everyone so that he could get back into the game. But, Turkey's plan ends in failure once Sarkozy decides to self-destruct in order to destroy the facility.
- The Informant: As a result of his product being highly desired by all prisoners (if for lack of competition and alternatives), he manages to hear a lot of the going-ons in the prison and shares it with Kaburagi.
- Military Moonshiner: He has carved out a comfortable niche for himself by producing oxyone-based moonshine for the prison gang.
- Nice Guy: He's one of the friendliest characters in the show and looks up to Kaburagi.
Jill
Voiced by: Michiyo Murase (Japanese), Mikaela Krantz (English)
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Her Gear avatar's skin is orange.
- Cyber Cyclops: Her cyborg form has one eye.
- Deadpan Snarker: Everything she says is always spoken with a droll, disinterested tone and oftentimes loaded with barely-disguised sarcasm.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: Her boots in her cyborg form don't have similar colors or patterns.
- Gadgeteer Genius: She is the resident programming and technology expert in Donatello's prison gang, capable of incredible feats like making an illegal terminal to log into and play Deca-Dence, hacking into the administrator's systems to gather info, and lasting quite a while against live security countermeasures.
- Hackette: She's incredibly skilled at hacking, being able to create a bootleg terminal to access Deca-Dence from the Bug Correctional Facility and with incredible knowledge about the machinery and security measures to even the most secure facilities, like Avatar Storage and the Gadoll Production Facility.
- The Unreveal: As Kaburagi is modified to take control of Deca-Dence, the fortress he blatantly asks Jill how a talented hacker and machinist like her ended up as a bug. The only thing we learn of her is that she used to be on the engineering team for Deca-Dence's core and if you want to know the series of exact events and decisions that led to her being classified as a bug, Kaburagi should go ask the System.
Humans
Tankers
The remaining unmodified humans on planet Earth, they are made to believe that they're valuable laborers and support staff for the Gears if they're not joining them on Gadoll hunts. In reality, they're effectively just window-dressing and slave-labor to the players and especially the Solid Quake Corporation, helping keep Deca-Dence fun and operating to their own detriment.
- Badass Normal: Some of them are just regular, unmodified humans but are still perfectly capable of matching the Gears in fighting the Gadoll. Unfortunately, they're also far more vulnerable to casualties and don't have the benefit of just jumping into a new avatar. Kurenai exemplifies this as the leader and most talented fighter among them.
- Meaningful Name: Their name comes from their living in Deca-dence's oxyone tank. How their houses and animals don't end up washed away or destroyed if the city is knocked about and sends all that fluid crashing into them like waves is a mystery.
- Red Shirt: Most of the Gears and the Power treat the human Gadoll hunters as little more than NPC allies and extras to make Gaddoll raids feel more alive and populated. It's notable that they only comprise a very small percentage of the Power's active force which is likely why they don't give them much thought.
Kurenai
Voiced by: Eri Kitamura (Japanese), Morgan Garrett (English)
- The Ace: She's the best among the humans.
- All Amazons Want Hercules: As shown in the aftermath of the underground raid in Episode 4, she is positively delighted at the prospect that Kaburagi is returning to active duty alongside her. Dialog from the rest of her squad implies she's been holding this torch for years and it hasn't flickered since then.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: She is the leader of Tankers in the Power and is the strongest of them as well. Natsume looks up to her as her idol.
- Blood Knight: Much as she takes her duty of Gadoll-hunting and protecting her fellow Tankers seriously, she also takes pleasure in the slaying. In the Distant Finale, she and Donatello spar in the new battle arena specifically made for those cyborgs and tankers who still like to get their blood pumping.
- Cool Big Sis: She behaves like an elder sister to Natsume and is very supportive for her.
Flashback Characters
Natsume's Father
Natsume's deceased father. He worked as both a human member of the Power and an archeologist, digging up and studying the remains of human civilization scattered around the world.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: As the world is crawling with Nigh-Invulnerable gadoll, he became very familiar with the weapons and tactics used to fight them.
- Disappeared Dad: He died when Natsume was very young.
- Good Parents: Before his untimely death, flashbacks showed that he was a loving father to Natsume, helping instill idealism and hope for a better future by showing her the precious records and documents of pre-gadoll earth in all its beauty.
- He Knows Too Much: The System had him killed by Gadoll after he got uncomfortably close to the truth about the cyborgs and thus, the true nature of the world and Deca-Dence.
Mikey
Voiced by: Taito Ban (Japanese), Clifford Chapin (English)
- Glory Seeker: He wanted to rise up to the top of the Ranker leader boards, whatever the cost. It ultimately costs him his life via an inglorious execution by disassembly, and gets his close friends arrested or forced into a dark, gruesome job as a bug hunter.
- Posthumous Character: His death/disassembly is what prompted Kaburagi's attempted suicide by starvation, which is what makes Kaburagi decide to take a chance on Natsume's dream of peace than "erasing" her like every other bug he's encountered.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears for one episode but the consequences of his actions dramatically shake-up the world of Deca-Dence both in and out of the universe. His cheating via removing his Limiters and being discovered for it is what led to his death, Donatello and Turkey being thrown into the Bug Correctional Facility; Kaburagi turned into a bug-hunter in exchange for some measure of freedom; and the removal of the Ranker system, after the game administrators realized how much the hypercompetitive nature of the leader boards could drive their players/workers into terrible decisions.
