Characters / Fuga: Melodies of Steel

The cast of Fuga: Melodies of Steel and its sequel.

WARNING: this page is currently under renovation/construction and may contain unmarked spoilers. Tread carefully.

The Taranis

The Taranis itself

The Taranis (タラニス, Taranisu)
Main gun: Soul Cannon (ソウルキャノン, Sōru Kyanon)

The Fortress of Steel

The tank the children pilot and use to fight the invading Berman army, after Malt and his friends find it in a cave on the outskirts of Petit Mona.

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• Base on Wheels: Despite being a weapon of mass destruction on tank treads otherwise, the Taranis is structured similarly to a three-story house— there's a dormitory, a kitchen/dining room, a place to do laundry, and even a farm in the basement. Even the soundtrack title lovingly refers to it as the kids' "steelclad home".^note Measuring the Taranis' height in profile from the treads of the tank to its highest tip gives us a height of it being about 25 times the height of its control panel. Given how the control panel is about the height of Malt's lower chest, we can guess it to be somewhere between 60 and 80 centimeters tall, thus making the Taranis' height around 15-20 meters tall. For reference, that's comparable to the height of a five-story building.
• BFG: Its Soul Cannon is an enormous energy cannon that stays folded up most of the time, and only allows its deployment when it senses it's in major trouble. It's bigger than any of the other guns available, and fires a massive blast of energy forward that one-shots just about everything unlucky enough to be in the crosshairs.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The manga adaptation reveals how the Taranis uses the life force of a child to power the Soul Cannon; the victim is impaled by wires so they can drain their bio-energy, all while the chamber is heated to super hot temperatures to leave no trace afterwards.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In regular gameplay, it appears to move at a steady pace for a vehicle of its size. Story-wise, however, the Taranis is implied to be capable of outright Super-Speed.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: If the Taranis feels that it's in danger of being destroyed or in a situation that is extremely dire, it will allow usage of the Soul Cannon, a BFG that will utterly vaporize everything in the blast and serve as an instant "I win" button. The catch? It cannot fire unless a living person enters its power chamber and uses their life force to power it. And there is no way to recover said person after the cannon fires, as they are totally vaporized while serving as its energy.
• Easy Logistics: The Taranis has seemingly limitless ammunition and fuel, and the kids only need to maintain it through Repair Kits and Energy Cells, or through their individual healing skills— and if its HP and SP being fully restored at the start of each chapter has any in-story basis, it may even have some gradual self-repair mechanisms. Justified, possibly, given that the Taranis is an ancient super-weapon humanity created using the same nanometal properties as Titano-Machina, and thus may be advanced enough to be completely self-sufficient.
• Empathic Weapon: The Taranis' performance seems to be impacted by the children's emotional state— when the children are depressed they can't use skills or Link Attacks, whereas each kid's Hero Mode is activated through positive feelings. Following the Soul Cannon tutorial, the kids' Despair Event Horizon causes the Taranis to wane in strength, and later when the children are forced to fight Britz, the Radio Woman notes that the tank is moving very sluggishly. Conversely, the Golden Ending to the first game has the children be filled with determination and resolve, which results in the Taranis being able to use its own energy to power the Soul Cannon (though it's also implied that Jeanne tapped into the sleeping Jihl's bio-energy to do so), and— unlike in the "normal" ending— it remains intact after the Vanargand's explosion. Justified, since the Taranis is made of nanometal, which— per Solatorobo: Red the Hunter— can adjust its capabilities according to its user's feelings or desires.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Soul Cannon is rightfully referred to as a "forbidden weapon", given what fuels it:
  • In-game, it only unseals during boss battles when the Taranis' HP drops below half, as a way for the player to proceed if they feel they have no other options to. Backstory-wise, it's stated in Jeanne's archives that she proposed its creation, as pure bio-energy was the only thing that stood a chance of piercing a Titano-Machina's defenses aside from another Titano-Machina. And after Lares and Lemures failed to stop the Vanargand, the only viable option left was the Taranis and its Soul Cannon.
  • At the end of the Final Boss in the first game, a crazed Shvein Hax orders the Vanargand to annihilate all of Gasco. Jeanne, knowing the Taranis' crew have no time left to stop him, realizes that the Soul Cannon is their only viable option. While a single child sacrifices themselves in the "normal" ending to the first game, the Golden Ending has all the kids instead use their combined resolve to power up the Soul Cannon.
• Meaningful Name: The tank was named after the Celtic god of thunder worshipped by the Gauls (and later Joan of Arc), of whom archeological evidence suggests was often associated with wheels and foul weather, but was nevertheless viewed as a protective leader figure of the Celtic pantheon— and indeed, the tank protects the children while being a formidable force against the Berman Army. Some (disputed) Roman accounts of the god Taranis have however claimed that the original Taranis desired living sacrifices (specifically, criminals and thieves would be encased within a wicker statue that would then be burned), which still fits the tank considering what the Soul Cannon does.
• Multiform Balance: A variation. The Taranis has three types of main weapons and an equal amount of children would stick to just one type.
  • The Machine Gun (blue) is low in power but high in speed and accuracy, and its specialty is in dealing with aerial enemies or chipping away armor. Used in the first game by Kyle, Mei, Sheena and Britz.
  • The Cannon (red) is high in power but low in speed and accuracy, and its specialty is in dealing out strong, high-damage attacks. Used in the first game by Malt, Boron, Hack and Wappa.
  • The Grenade Launcher has a balance of power and accuracy, and its specialty is in dishing out special attacks or afflicting negative status effects on enemies. Used in the first game by Hanna, Socks, Chick and Jin.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Of course, the Soul Cannon can only be powered up through draining all the bio-energy of whoever enters its chamber, which causes them to "fade away" afterwards. While it's left ambiguous as to how this happens in the game, the manga adaptation portrays the process of the Soul Cannon as being explicitly agonizing; the user is impaled by wires that seemingly drain out bio-energy, while the chamber is heated to super-hot temperatures to eradicate every trace of the body. In the second game, it's revealed that the Soul Cannon was intentionally designed to run on the power of a forsaken Hybrid child, with one guilt-ridden researcher having to modify it to sacrifice an adult like herself. It is also revealed that the tank itself can only be used by children, as Socks and Jin shockingly discover in their Link Event.
• Purple Is Powerful: The Soul Cannon's bio-energy takes on a dark red-violet hue. Its energy blast is also mostly purple with shades of red as well.
• Super-Speed: It's implied in-story that the Taranis is capable of moving rather fast, such as how it rides off a cliff to reach the Vanargand, and climbs it all the way to Paresia in a matter of minutes. The manga adaptation even shows it leaping over the wall surrounding Paresia.
• Tank Goodness: To say that the Taranis is more than capable of dishing out firepower would still be a massive understatement.
• Unexplained Recovery: The second game has the tank thrown over the sea of clouds regardless of the ending, with everyone present stating that it is a weapon no one should ever wield. The Golden Ending has it show up back in the cave near Petit Mona where the original six first found it, much to the shock of Malt.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Soul Cannon obliterates everything in its path, and it's wide enough to take up the entire screen.

The Exo-Taranis (SPOILERS OFF FOR FUGA 1 AND PART OF FUGA 2)

The Exo-Taranis (エキゾ・タラニス, Ekizo Taranisu)
Main gun: Soul Cannon (ソウルキャノン, Sōru Kyanon)
Sub-main gun: Managarm (マーナガルム, Mānagarumu)

Steel Demon with the Heart of a God

The main tank for the second game following its first major twist. The Exo-Taranis is a combination of the original Taranis and the Tarascus, resulting in an even more powerful giant tank utilizing both the Soul Cannon and the Managarm.

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• Brought Down to Normal: In the Golden Ending, AI Hax converts the core of the Tarascus into pure energy for the Soul Cannon (terminating him in the process), which results in the Exo-Taranis reverting back into the original Taranis.
• Convenient Color Change: While the Exo-Taranis' version of the Soul Cannon still harbors red-violet energy when charging up, its beam now fires a variety of different colors depending on what order each of the children are sacrificed.
• Fusion Dance: After Jihl uses the Belenos to destroy the Tarascus, along with leaving nothing of Hanna behind but her jacket, the children's righteous fury towards him resonates with the tanks' remains and causes them to fuse into the Exo-Taranis, a tank strong enough to stand a chance against Jihl and the Belenos.
• Irony: The original Taranis was designed by Crusade to destroy the Titano-Machina through the power of the Soul Cannon, and yet the Exo-Taranis is in essence a combination of Crusade and Titano-Machina technology through having the Taranis as a base model but utilizing the core of the Tarascus/Vanargand as its energy source. In a roundabout way, however, it can be said that Jeanne's falsified story about the fight between the Taranis and Vanargand became true— rather than just copying Juno technology, the Taranis has now literally "taken God's power as its own".
• Multiform Balance: The Exo-Taranis retains the previous three weapon types from the original Taranis and Tarascus, with four children given for each one.
  • The Machine Gun (blue) is low in power but high in speed and accuracy, and its specialty is in dealing with aerial enemies or chipping away armor. Kyle, Mei and Britz return to using this gun, and Hack has swapped to the role of Machine Gun user after being a Cannon user in the first game.
  • The Cannon (red) is high in power but low in speed and accuracy, and its specialty is in dealing out strong, high-damage attacks. Malt and Boron return to using it alongside the newcomer Vanilla, and Jin has swapped to the role of Cannon user after managing a Grenade Launcher in the first game.
  • The Grenade Launcher has a balance of power and accuracy, and its specialty is in dishing out special attacks or afflicting negative status effects on enemies. Chick and Socks return to using this weapon, with Sheena and Wappa swapping to it after respectively using the Machine Gun and Cannon in the first game.

The Children

In General

The Children of the Taranis^note Have been jokingly nicknamed "The Malts" by the game's lead artist

The initial six children available at the start of the game: Kyle, Hanna, Socks, Boron and Mei in the background, with Malt in the foreground reactivating the Taranis.

The main cast of the game. The lives of each of these twelve children were in some way ruined by the Berman Empire's tirade of destruction, but they were given the chance to fight back using the ancient power of the Taranis. Initially, the gang starts with only the first six members from the Petit Mona village, with the rest being encountered as the story progresses.

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• Aerith and Bob: Some of them have fairly common names like; Mei, Hanna, Kyle, Sheena, and Jin alongside names like; Malt, Boron, Socks, Hack, Chick, Wappa, and Britz.
• Badass Adorable: They're Funny Animal kids with downright huggable designs, but give them a super-powered tank and a good reason and they'll be able to smoke an entire army with nothing held back.
  • Little Miss Badass: The girls aren't any older than twelve during the first game, and they can still kick some ass with the Taranis.
• Barefoot Poverty: Roughly half the kids lack any shoes (in their default outfits anyway, alternate costumes can avert this). Though given how most of them live in rural villages, it's likely because either their families couldn't afford shoes or they've had no need for them. In the second game, however, most of the kids wear shoes with their default outfits, implying that their barefooted status may have been more due to the circumstances during their efforts to evade capture from the Berman Army. The two exceptions are Hack and Sheena.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As reluctant as they are to fight their enemies, it doesn't change the fact that they will if needed, putting their hesitation aside for the sake of accomplishing their goals. Beyond just the foes they're fought in self-defense or killed by accident, they've personally taken down most vile villains like Blutwurst, the original Hax and Cayenne without a shred of inhibition.
• Children Forced to Kill: From as early as the first chapter, they're given no choice but to kill some of their foes to survive and continue. They definitely don't take it well, and it's shown throughout the game that they really don't come to enjoy it later on.
• Child Soldier: By necessity, they essentially form an independent combat unit in order to save their families and liberate Gasco. Britz is one twice over due to having already been in the Berman army before joining the other kids.
• Cute Kitten/Precious Puppy: They're a rare anthromorphic example of this, but they're all cute as buttons and consist entirely out of cats and dogs.
• Determinator: All of them. Even in the midst of their doubts and grief, even when faced with war machines and enemy soldiers with far more experience than them, the kids never, never give up on their quest to save their loved ones from the Berman Empire.
• Edible Theme Naming: All of the kids' surnames (Socks notwithstanding) are derived from different dessert or otherwise sweet foods. See their individual entries for details.
• Eye Colour Change: When any of them enter Hero Mode during a battle, their eyes glow a red-orange color, with a red-orange aura surrounding them. During the Golden Ending when underneath the golden light of the Taranis' Soul Cannon, their eyes again switch from red-orange to a bright green.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Heroic example. Most of them start out as just everyday kids from backwater villages with Britz, the final member to join, being the only one with anything resembling military training before rolling up to the Berman Empire in a Lost Superweapon so powerful that it even poses a threat while operated by a bunch of children.
• Kid Hero: Given that they're the ones leading the charge against the Berman Empire. Deconstructed in that they're (mostly) self-inflicted Child Soldiers with zero fighting experience or training, experience everything from homesickness to outright panic throughout their entire journey, and unlike many other examples, can die in the worst of circumstances. If the Taranis wasn't as powerful as it was, the Berman Empire would have absolutely steamrolled them.
• La Résistance: While they don't give themselves a title and their initial reasons for fighting in the war are personal as opposed to outright heroic (rescuing their captured families), they still count as this trope given that they're the ones fighting against the Berman Empire's invasion and breaking their hold across Gasco.
• Love Dodecahedron: Subtle, but there is some romantic tension between the crew, which is really ramped up in the second game, but it's in the background and the player has to pay attention to see it from the interactions.
  • Malt is shipped heavily with Hanna and Vanilla, while Chick starts crushing on him hard.
  • Kyle has feelings for Hanna, but she appears to either not notice or kindly not reciprocate. Wappa and Chick also show some interest in him. With Vanilla saying she'd love to see Petit Mona with him and giggling, whilst saying Kyle teases her so.
  • Britz and Sheena spend a lot of time with one another, with even their families meeting and spending time together.
  • Wappa shows interest in a few boys. In the first game, at the end of her link events with Kyle, Wappa believes they are a couple now, whilst in the second game, she asks him what it is like to fall in love with the story not showing Kyle's answer. She also declares Socks as her Boyfriend in their link events as a way to better understand "love and peace", and by the end the two agree to keep up the coupling as an experiment.
  • Though Chick (as stated above) is mainly interested in Malt, she is interested in multiple older boys. For example, Chick says she'll marry Kyle and promises him to take her privately to a cafe, wants Socks as an escort and is pleased that Britz has no girlfriend during their link events in the second game. It is also vaguely implied that she sees Malt's sister Mei as an option for a possible suitor.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: An idealistic farmhand boy and his energetic preschool-aged sister, a somewhat dorky and playful Team Mom, a grouchy and socially awkward City Mouse, a Gentle Giant that can't stop thinking about food, a timid and nerdy Cute Bookworm inventor, a pair of precocious pranksters, an overly-quiet and overly-polite Mystical Waif, a deep-voiced and very aloof mechanic, a plucky brat who's seriously convinced that she's the one in charge of the team, a melancholic ex-Child Soldier and most recently a showoff-ish Blue Blood. All of whom fight together to fight back against whatever forces are threatening their homeland and disrupting their peace.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their portraits in Hero Mode show their eyes turning red-orange.
• Reluctant Warrior: Initially, they're children suddenly tasked with the heavy burden of fighting on the frontlines of a war, and are understandably mortified when they take their first life. During intermissions, you sometimes have to lie to Mei by telling her that the Berman tanks you're destroying are completely unmanned and that nobody's really dying. However, through both the manipulations of the Radio Woman as well as learning how deep the Berman Empire's villainy runs do they start growing out of this mentality, realizing that the only way to make the Berman Army stand down is to make them.
• Strong and Skilled: Taking into account how canonically none of the children sacrificed themselves to the Soul Cannon in the first game (barring the tutorial, which even then had its sacrifice undone), this means the majority of their fights were won because they've learned to use the Taranis' regular weapons (which are powerful in their own right and are more versatile than the Soul Cannon) to their fullest potential, which gameplay heavily encourages the player to do. And considering how both Jeanne and the Hax AI generally default to recommending the Soul Cannon whenever a fight seems to go south, this also means that in-story any strategic and tactical brilliance can mostly be credited to the children figuring out how to win without the Soul Cannon.

The initial six kids from Petit Mona

Malt Marzipan

Malt Marzipan (マルト・マジパン, Maruto Majipan)

Voiced by: Ayumu Murase
Species: Caninu (German Shepherd)
Age: 12 (later 13)

"After all, I'm the oldest!"

^{Click here to see Malt as he appears in the first game}

"Alright! With this thing, we may have a chance to get them back— for sure!"

The oldest of the children aboard the Taranis, and the self-appointed leader. After losing his parents to illness, Malt was sent to live on his grandparents' farm as a shepherd. Courageous and harboring a strong sense of responsibility, Malt hopes to lead his friends to victory in saving their loved ones.

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• Alliterative Name: Malt Marzipan.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: In the second game, a fully Resolute Malt ends up with a very aggressively oriented set of Leadership Skills, including setting all teammates turns to go before the enemy, recovering SP randomly to keep up a skill-heavy assault, taking additional turns and a chance at instant-killing enemies below half HP.
• Betty and Veronica: The Archie to Hanna's girl-next-door Betty and Vanilla's high-class Veronica.
• BFG: Cannons are his favored gun type when on the turrets, featuring the highest attack power but low accuracy which makes it ill-suited for fighting enemy aerial units.
• Big Brother Instinct: Naturally, towards Mei. But once the villagers set out on their journey aboard the Taranis, he extends this to the rest of the kids as well.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Completely averted in the first game; not only is it an option to remove Malt from the party despite his de-facto protagonist status, he can be sacrificed as early as the first boss and the game will continue on with other characters taking his place in parts where he would be speaking. The second game however plays this straight, as he cannot be sacrificed to the Soul Cannon during gameplay due to his greater role in the story and the Judgment mechanic revolving around him.
• Catchphrase: "I'm the oldest!" In some Link Events, he adds something along the lines of, "So it's my job to look after you guys!"
• Character Exaggeration: His portrayal in the Comedies of Steel manga has him take far more personal pride in his role as the oldest child on the tank, with it often leading him to making more impulsive and overconfident decisions (like pushing Kyle to admit his crush on Hanna), in contrast to how his game self is rather calm and level-headed.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Malt doesn't quite seem to realize that many of the girls on the team see him in a romantic light. Slightly Averted as there seems to be some acknowledgment between him and Hanna, but enforced when Chick starts crushing on him in the second game and Vanilla's respect for his leadership borders on affection.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Unlike how Waffle Ryebread is an established police officer and how Red Savarin is a cocky adventurer-for-hire, Malt starts the game as a humble farmhand boy who enjoys the country lifestyle as opposed to someone already experienced with adventure or conflict. While it's easy to see how he contrasts Red's Idiot Hero Blood Knight nature in that he hates fighting and acts as the unconditional protector of the rest of the kids on the Taranis (and how his doting relationship with his younger sister Mei is a complete inversion of Red's bickering relationship with his younger sister Chocolat), Malt still manages to contrast Waffle due to the burden of responsibility he places upon himself as the one leading his crew, which results in him developing a more cynical and pragmatic side as he and his friends keep getting dragged into conflict, compared to Waffle's unshakable All-Loving Hero nature.
• Decoy Protagonist: A rare player-determined example in the first game. Despite being the main protagonist he does not have Plot Armour meaning you can sacrifice him at any time after unlocking the Soul Cannon.
• Desperation Attack: His Brave Shot skill in the first game, which gets more powerful the closer you are to death.
• Dog Stereotype: He's a German shepherd and the heroic leader of the Taranis. This gets taken to it's natural evolution in the second game, where Malt can make narrative choices that can not only affect the outcome of the story, but also give him additional leader skills depending on how empathetic or ruthless he is.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Has these when he falls into his Heroic BSoD in the second game.
• Edible Theme Naming:
  • Malt and his sister's surname comes from marzipan, a honey and almond confection typically used for small candies or decorative cake figures due to being easily moldable.
  • Malt comes from the malt cereal grain, typically barley, that, once sprouted, is dried (in a process called malting). Once dried, malt is often ground into a slightly sweet powder also known as sweet meal. It fits, considering Malt's rural upbringing and love of his grandmother's homemade sweets.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Malt in the first game was simply a kid skilled in firing a cannon, But Maestro heavily implies that the Leadership Skills he gains in the second game are the result of the Tarascus and later the Exo-Taranis empowering Malt with the ability to subtly warp reality during combat to discreetly shift odds in his favor.
• Farm Boy: He's been working on his grandparents' farm as a moosheep herder ever since his mother and father died.
• Fatal Flaw: Guilt. As the oldest child on the Taranis, Malt feels it's his responsibility to handle everyone else on the tank, and this desire to protect them even manifests into the Leadership Skills seen in the second game, but this also results in Malt putting a burden of said responsibility upon himself as the one leading them. The first game shows traces of this in that the Soul Cannon tutorial has Malt blame himself for not being able to protect his friends, the beginning of the second chapter has Malt briefly question if it was his fault for getting his friends involved in war, and Hanna expresses concern over Malt spreading himself thin during their Link Events together. The second game is where it becomes prevalent enough to be outright self-destructive, however: following Hanna's death at the hands of Jihl and the Belenos, Malt's grief towards being unable to save her and regret that he couldn't keep his friends from being thrown into conflict again results in him undergoing a Heroic BSoD. This soon boils over into him wanting to subject Jihl to a lethal revenge— not only as a way for Malt to satiate his hatred towards Jihl, but also implicitly as a means for him to atone for Hanna's death— with this obsessive fury resulting in him becoming less able to properly listen to his friends or make rational decisions. In the Normal Ending of the second game where Hanna and Jihl sacrifice themselves to stop Cayenne, a grief-stricken Malt pulls a Taking You with Me to finish Cayenne off with the Soul Cannon.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: The Male Mutt to Hanna and Vanilla's Female Feline.
• Furry Reminder: In one Comedies of Steel episode when he's too hot he's seen strewn on a table with his tongue sticking out like an actual dog.
• Go Out with a Smile: If he is selected during the initial use of the Soul Cannon (and no, you have to select someone for this), he reassures himself his death will not be in vain 'as long as I can save everyone'. It doesn't stick, thanks to 'mysterious powers' turning back the clock shortly afterwards just before the Pretzel fight.
  Malt: After all, I'm the oldest…!!
• Greater-Scope Paragon: It's heavily implied in the first game's Golden Ending that Shepherd was named as such in his honor, essentially giving him this status.
• Heroic BSoD: Spends multiple chapters of the second game in a near catatonic state in which he can't take part in link events and doing chores around the tank shows a faded, darker image without the participant's usual jovial cheers. His blank, empty look replaces most of his character portraits, including the Leader Skill cut-ins. It can be unexpectedly amusing when fulfilling one of his requests during an intermission shows you the text "Malt feels great!" accompanied by his thousand yard stare.
  • By the second game's Golden Ending, Malt comes to terms with the decisions he had to make and internalizes his pain into become a more positive leader.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A possibility at any time in the first game, but in the second he is normally exempt from being fired in the Soul Cannon unless you're on track for a Normal or Bad ending. If anyone else is dead the possibility of Hanna being rescued is lost and Malt will automatically use himself as a Soul Cannon shot to finish off Cayenne without the player's input.
• Honorary Aunt: The "How It All Began" comic has him call Hanna's mother Yona oba-san (おばさん, though this is just written as "Ms. Yona" in the English subtitles), showing that he views her as an aunt figure.
• Humble Hero: It's clear that his frequent assertions about being the oldest of the kids stem more from his sense of responsibility than any personal pride, and the same applies to his role as the one leading the charge against the Berman Army.
  Kyle: Think about it, once we save everybody, we'll be heroes when we get back home, huh?
  Malt: Hmm, heroes… I'd be satisfied just to eat some of the sweets Grandma makes than anything epic like that.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die:
  • If you sacrifice Hanna, Kyle, Boron or Socks to the Soul Cannon in the tutorial, Malt will feel personal responsibility for not being able to prevent it.
  Malt: I… couldn't protect him/her…
  • Losing Hanna in the second game is his primary driving force to pursue and destroy Belenos.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: He's gotten a pair of these by the time of the second game, having changed from his optimistic idealist ways to someone decidedly more vengeful. His change in tone is the focal point of the second game announcement trailer, with Malt wrathfully declaring he will kill his enemy serving as The Stinger.
• The Leader: The de-facto leader of the kids due to being the oldest. Most people also tend to view him as the de-facto protagonist in the same way, including the main character designer. He's unquestionably this by the second game, with the Judgment system intending to highlight his growth as a leader through his choices and actions, and the tagline of the game referring to itself as his story.
• Mistaken for Romance: Gets quite a bit a Ship Tease with Vanilla in the second game with the two looking to each other to help them through their grief (Malt losing Hanna and Vanilla losing her father) and struggling together; though a lot of outsiders believing they are a young couple going through a lover's spat which both deny.
• Nice Guy: He's very approachable and tries his best to help the other members of the crew through their problems.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the second game. He does not handle losing Hanna to Jihl well at all, and this makes him lose his typical level-headed attitude and become very brooding and revenge-hungry, to the point where he considers letting a town getting caught in the crossfire just to get a chance to take Jihl down. It's especially telling when Mei, who usually has nothing but nice things to say about Malt, is shown to be visibly scared by his aggression.
• Pun: Malt is a German shepherd dog who herds livestock — he's a shepherd shepherd.
• Red Armband of Leadership: Wears a red bandana around his right arm to evoke this. It appears on his left arm whenever his portrait faces to the left.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: After the events of the Hopeless Boss Fight, Kyle, Socks and Boron all assume that the reason he has 'tears in his eyes' was because of a very bad dream he had, and all he has is a 'weird feeling'. What they don't actually know is that the Taranis has rewinded time just before one of them sacrificed themselves to the Soul Cannon.
• Shipper on Deck: The Comedies of Steel iteration of Malt is a shockingly gung-ho supporter of Kyle's crush on Hanna to the point of rushing to deliver a bouquet that Kyle himself had chickened out on... though the bouquet with Kyle's written love confession ends up in Jin's bed by accident.
• Ship Tease:
  • Subtle, but a lot of official artwork seem to pair him and Hanna together. Taken further in the second game where Hanna's temporary death breaks Malt and sends him on a full blown path of vengeance and depression; and if the player does not meet the requirements to resurrect her, Malt will automatically sacrifice himself in the final boss battle.
  • The second game also likes pairing him with Vanilla, many outside the crew believing they are boyfriend and girlfriend, but Malt dismisses these claims as She's Not My Girlfriend.
• Sibling Seniority Squabble: The exaggerated version of Malt seen in the prerelease Comedies of Steel shorts depicts him this way towards Hanna, who is the same age as him in years but short by a few months. In the same episode, he wakes up screaming from a horrible nightmare... in which he was the youngest rather than the oldest.
• Team Dad: Tying in with him being the oldest kid in the crew, Malt firmly believes it's his responsibility to look after the welfare of the other kids and keep them on track with whatever situation they're dealing with. An Empathy aligned Malt is more gentle and nurturing while a Resolution aligned Malt is more stern but still reasonable and encouraging in a Dare to Be Badass sort of way.
• These Hands Have Killed: Malt is one of the most shocked of the group by the fact a person died because of them. One of his comments when he is depressed is him disturbed for having to end their enemies in battle.
• Trial by Friendly Fire: At his lowest point when he's completely consumed by his lust for revenge on Jihl, he commands the crew to attack the Belenos as it passes through a settlement, despite the protests of everyone that it would be doing even more damage to innocents caught in the crossfire.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Extremely downplayed, but apparent if you play a Resolution-focused Malt. While during intermissions and Link Events he's still the Nice Guy he always was, during Resolution Events mid-chapter. The other kids will note he's become more stern, pushy, and somewhat abrasive to a point where he sometimes unintentionally intimidates them. Malt himself is unaware he's acting until the other kids eventually spell it out to him, which prompts him to apologize and readjusts his methods to balance his usual friendiness with more encouraging boldness that he tries to instill on the other kids.
• Took a Level in Cynic: His character in the first game has him try to be a general Nice Guy and a dependable leader. His quotes alone in the second game's trailer and character info has him outright threaten death to his enemies. The added Karma Meter introduced also dictates if he dials it back or if he become full-on relentless.
• Trauma Conga Line: Being dragged into not one but two wars just a year apart, having the lives of everyone he ever loved threatened, and several of his most trusted friends who he survived that war with abducted by the very weapon that allowed them to do so, with both cases forcing him to rely on a weapon that saps the life force of its users, has taken an understandable toll on his mental state.
• Unexplained Recovery: In the manga, Malt went through a Death by Adaptation, sacrificing himself to the Soul Cannon in order to kill Flam Kish (who joined forces with Shvein Hax to ambush the Taranis at once)... only to then show up with the rest of the crew wondering why everyone was crying his name. The rest of the crew chose not to question it as they're just glad to have their friend back. However, it's only an unexplained recovery to the children, as no one was aware that the silhouetted figure implied to be Carmine swapped out Malt with a Dummy Soul at the last second.
• Working-Class Hero: He's a simple moosheep herder who becomes the de facto leader of the children.

Hanna Fondant

Hanna Fondant (ハンナ・フォンダン, Hanna Fondan)

Voiced by: Reina Ueda
Species: Felineko (Turkish Angora)
Age: 12 (later 13)

"I'm the second oldest, so I have to do everything I can!"

^{Click here to see Hanna as she appears in the first game}

"We must fight… for everyone!"

The second oldest aboard the Taranis tank and Malt's longtime friend. A compassionate and thoughtful girl with a sisterly personality who wants to become a doctor someday.

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• All-Loving Heroine: Hanna is defined by her concern for others' wellbeing over her own, and is shown to be the most openly opposed to fighting, even being the first to express sympathy towards Colonel Pretzel when he dies.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Even her fellow teammates on the Taranis dread the idea of her getting upset, and for good reason; if any of them cause trouble, a harsh motherly scolding or extra chores are the most lenient punishments they could hope for. But in the case of Jin, who in a Comedies of Steel short came to the kitchen dirty, Hanna responded by dunking him into the sink.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: She's one of the five children held hostage and used by the rampaging Taranis at the start of the second game. Unlike the others, she doesn't make it and spends the rest of the game as a Virtual Ghost.
• Childhood Friends: Though the cast are still technically in their childhood, she has this distinction from Malt's side as the friend who's been with him the longest.
• Combat Medic: Her skillset may be largely heal-based but she's still just as capable of fighting as the other kids.
• Cool Big Sis: She's the second oldest after Malt and usually interacts with the other children in a mature, caring but cheerful manner.
• Edible Theme Naming: Her surname comes from the fondant icing used to decorate cakes, akin to the namesake of Malt's surname.
• Flat Character: She's kind and caring, sure, but she tends to have less in the way of personal flaws or fears compared to the rest of the children.
• Grenade Launcher: Uses one as her weapon type when on the turrets.
• Healing Shiv: When set as a Support, then the normal attacks of whoever she's paired up with will recover a small amount of HP.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Wears her hair draped over one eye.
• Like a Daughter To Me: In the illustration where the crew rescued their families from the prison camp, it's implied that Malt and Mei's grandparents view Hanna as like another granddaughter, as they're seen greeting her along with her own mother.
• Meaningful Name: Her name may be a play on hana (花), the Japanese word for "flower", as fitting her kind and sweet personality, along with the numerous other references to flowers included throughout the game.^note Such as the lyrics to "Flower on the Trails" or "Elegy of Winds", which both indirectly reference the children as "petals" or "flowers". Additionally, "Hanna" is derived from the Hebrew name "Hannah", which means "gracious" or "merciful", as befitting her All-Loving Heroine nature.
• The Medic: She learns the most healing skills of all the children, and outside of battle she's the one with the most medical know-how. She even dreams of pursuing a career as a doctor.
• Morality Pet: It's her empathy towards Jihl that causes him to doubt his plans to enact revenge on the world, and eventually lead him to redeem himself.
• Nice Girl: A kind soul beloved by everyone on the Taranis.
• Not So Above It All: Despite her usual calm and reserved attitude, she's still prone to being playful, such as teasingly telling Hack that she'll make sure to get really angry when he does something wrong, or warning one of the kids that she may forget to do their laundry if they don't help her with it themselves. The character designer has pointed out that she can actually be rather expressive sometimes.
• Put on a Bus: Due to losing her physical form and getting trapped inside the Belenos as an AI, Hanna loses her playable status in the second game and instead serves a supporting role seperate from the rest of the children.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Has the vibrant pink hair and the kindly big sister personality to go with it.
• Sacrificial Lion: She dies a few chapters into the second game after the process of teleporting her off of the Taranis gets interrupted. It's partly subverted when she returns as a Virtual Ghost, and then fully subverted in the true ending, where she's fully revived.
• Sailor Fuku: The school uniform set DLC provides Hanna with one.
• Ship Tease: Subtle, but a lot of official artwork seem to pair her and Malt together. Their last Link Event also has Hanna wish that she and Malt can spend some time alone together once the war is over.
• Stronger Than You Look: In Comedies of Steel, at least, possibly due to Rule of Funny. One episode has her stop Malt and Jin in their tracks by pure physical force, and another has her grab Jin and shove his entire upper half in the kitchen sink for not washing his hands. It isn't too surprising if this would be the case for her in the main game, however— being the Team Mom of the crew means she has to carry a lot of weight anyways.
• Team Mom: Especially to the younger members of the crew, particularly close to Mei. She even tells Hack that she'll try to fill the void his mom left, which includes angrily scolding him. One Comedies of Steel skit has her express that she's happy for Britz to call her "mom" outright (even if by accident).
• Virtual Ghost: In the second game, while she initially appears to be vaporized during an interrupted transport, her consciousness is able to attach itself to the Belenos, acting as its AI similarly to Jeanne for the Taranis and Hax for the Tarascus.
• White Mage: Most of her skills are based around recovering health or from negative ailments, with her Support and Link Skills letting you recover a set amount of health when conditions are met. Her offensive options, most of which she learns only at later levels, are focused on debuffing the enemy offense. Her Hero Mode also doubles the effect of her healing skills.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: If Comedies of Steel is anything to go by, she hates bugs.

Kyle Bavarois

Kyle Bavarois (カイル・バヴァロワ, Kairu Bavarowa)

Voiced by: Sachi Kokuryu
Species: Felineko (Abyssinian)
Age: 11 (later 12)

"This thing's freaking awesome! Bet with this big old jalopy, we can beat those Berman jerks!"

^{Click here to see Kyle as he appears in the first game}

"I-I ain't afraid…! Let's kick their asses!"

The new kid in Petit Mona at the time of the invasion, his parents moved out from the capital after his father's business went bankrupt. Partly because of his displeasure with his new surroundings, he has a somewhat sour attitude.

---

• Anti-Air: His other speciality, even for a weapon class already well suited for dealing with air units. Combined with the above, his Piercing Rain skill is second to none for stripping armor from all air units at the same time. In the second game this preferred target of his is furthered, as his Support specialty is now increased damage to enemy aerial units rather than the increased accuracy he previously provided.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • More so than the other Machine Gun users, as his special skills lets him remove enemy armor more quickly, or straight up bypass them. When his Hero Mode is active, all of his attacks turn into Critical Hits.
  • Particularly in the second game. All machine gunners have some armor stripping capability, but Kyle is the most specialized in stripping with three different skills for removing different numbers of layers, and when he's the support in a Link Attack he grants it stripping properties.
• Blood Knight: Downplayed. Briefly at the start of the game, he gets ecstatic towards the Taranis' fighting prowess, but it goes down after the kids beat Pretzel on the second loop, realizing the true gravity of the situation they're in. Afterwards, he shows far less excitement for going into battle, and even expresses to Hanna in his final Link Event with her that he's just as willing to end the war and go home as everyone else is.
• The Bully: Tends to be the meanest among the crew, primarily towards Malt and Boron, who receive the brunt of his insults. In both cases, he can eventually reach Bully Turned Buddy status when their bonds are maxed out— he's even happy that he can have a friend like Boron.
  • Bully Turned Buddy was optional through pursuing Link Events prior, but as of the second game it's become official. His tongue is as sharp as ever, but his treatment of Boron is now more like affectionate ribbing between friends than genuine dislike, and he's grown into more of The Lancer to Malt rather than a city boy looking down on the country hick.
• Cat Stereotype: In a contrast with Malt being a loyal and optimistic Heroic Dog, Kyle is a snarky and dismissive cat with a more cynical attitude. Ironically, Abyssinian cats are known for being rather intelligent and people-oriented, whereas Kyle prefers to keep to himself out of his belief that he's The Friend Nobody Likes.
• Character Development: Begins opening up to his friends more over the course of the story. By the second game, he retains his somewhat snarky air but still manages to get along well with everyone.
• City Mouse: Counterpart to the rest of the country boys and girls in the cast. In his first Link Event with Malt, he complains that he was meant to be surrounded by art and culture, not moosheep and straw.
• Doomed Hometown: Like the rest of the initial crewmates, his current home Petit Mona is wrecked by the Berman's invasion. Kyle in particular however gets a second dose of this in the game's finale, where his original home city Paresia is destroyed by the Vanargand.
• Edible Theme Naming: His surname comes from bavarois (otherwise known as bavarian cream), a popular cream filling for pastries made from whipped cream, custard and gelatin.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Not him specifically, but Kyle's final Link Event with Boron reveals that these have a lot to do with him keeping his distance from the other kids in Petit Mona. After his father's business went under, many of the kids in Paresia whom Kyle thought were his friends began to tease him over it, and even the ones who weren't taking part in the bullying themselves wouldn't stick up for him.
• Foil: The most direct one to Malt himself. Whereas Malt is a dog perfectly happy with his life in the rural Petit Mona, Kyle's a cat who's bored with the country lifestyle, wishing he were in the city. Whereas Malt's very open about his feelings and acts as a leader figure to the other kids, Kyle is more aloof and feels the most disconnected from his friends. Malt also refers to himself using boku in Japanese to denote his friendly demeanor despite the amount of focus he puts on being the oldest, whereas Kyle uses the more masculine ore to denote his more closed-off attitude and the insecurity he has regarding his own immaturity. Even their skill sets in battle contrast one another: whereas Malt is a cannoneer with a strong attack power and low accuracy, Kyle's a machine gunner whose strong accuracy is his main niche in battle.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Averted in reality, but Kyle sees himself as this to the rest of the Petit Mona children, and keeps them at arm's length as a result, to the point that his selection quote when arming the Soul Cannon is "Not like anyone will miss me when I'm gone..."
• Furry Reminder: In Comedies of Steel when he angrily yells at Boron and Socks, he hisses like an angry cat.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Of the antisocial loner variety. Come the second game, however, he's undergone a slight Expository Hairstyle Change. The overall style remains the same but the bang is shorter and now simply covers his brow rather than the entire eye, signifying how he's let down his walls a bit.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's crass, snarky and sour on the outside, but will open up to his comrades after getting to know them well enough. Overlaps a lot with Jerkass Façade, considering his reasoning for keeping the other kids at a distance is due to a belief that none of them like him anyways. Even his in-game description states that he's "actually quite gentle and lonely".
• Meaningful Name: "Kyle" is descended from the Scottish word caol, meaning "narrow" or "strait". It fits given his more quiet and introverted attitude compared to the other kids in Petit Mona.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • In Comedies of Steel, when Malt accidentally gives the flowers and letter Kyle intended for Hanna to Jin instead.
  • Has it happen to him canonically in the second game:
    Boron: How've you been, Kyle?
    Kyle: Fine, don't you go worrying about me. Something 'bout you has been on my mind a lot, though.
    Boron: (flustered) I'm always on your mind? D-do you mean-?
    Kyle: I dunno what you were about to say, but let's just assume no.
• More Dakka: The second user of the machine gun in the initial party.
• Parting-Words Regret: Deeply regretful that the last interaction he had with his father prior to the Berman invasion and his subsequent abduction was an argument.
• Poor Communication Kills: The bonus video A Life Filled With Flowers has him trample the flowers collected by Chick and Hack in anger, upsetting them greatly. It's explained afterwards that he's upset towards them for picking these flowers when they should've been getting food supplies, and that the flowers are also poisonous when ingested, as Kyle himself learnt that the hard way when feeding them to his pet bird killed it by accident. Thankfully, he makes amends with the twins through collecting some edible flowers with Boron's help.
• Puppy Love: He's eleven and has a crush on Hanna, who's just a year older than him.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His necktie used to be his mother's scarf.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: With Boron, though their physical presentation and the personality entailed are swapped: with Boron being the larger rugged worker who gets his hands dirty farming but is more sensitive and empathetic to others' feelings, while Kyle is tough and standoffish but physically much smaller, likes things neat and tidy and is fussy about his appearance.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: His attire featuring a tie and cardigan is noticeably fancier compared to the other children, who mostly wear simple frocks or farmboy overalls.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Has the dirtiest, most unfiltered mouth among the kids. Even his closest rival Jin is a distant second place.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Played with. As a City Mouse Kyle is much more in-the-know on how sophisticated people act, but his attitude and way of speaking make it less than obvious. He can act gentlemanly without his usual snark or cursing, but it's not his typical persona and it's a surprise to the other kids when he does it.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In direct contrast to Malt's new colder personality in the second game, Kyle is described as being much more open following the events of the first game. It's obvious in his character portrait, where he has a friendly smile rather than his disinterested scowl from before.
• Unknown Rival: Kyle views himself as Malt's rival, being The Lancer to Malt's The Leader usually getting under his skin in the "Comedies of Steel" skits, mainly because he pines for Hanna, but it appears she has a Childhood Friend Romance with Malt. On Malt's end however, he views Kyle more as a "grumpy friend" and even supports Kyle's affections for Hanna, but only makes things worse for him furhtering this one-sided rivalry.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: He roleplayed as different types of girls in order to help Socks overcome his social anxiety when talking to girls according to one episode of Comedies of Steel 2.

Boron Brioche

Boron Brioche (ボロン・ブリオッシュ, Boron Buriosshu)

Voiced by: Shinnosuke Tokudome
Species: Felineko (Chartreux)
Age: 10 (later 11)

"Alright! Haha! I'm so relieved, it makes me really hungry…"

^{Click here to see Boron as he appears in the first game}

"If that means we can save everyone, I'll fight, too."

One of five children in his family, born to a farmer father and chef mother. He is gentle by nature, loves food and dislikes fighting.

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• Afraid of Their Own Strength: His "Overload" skill lets him unleash a whopping five-hit attack, but it inflicts him with the Fear status ailment— apparently, Boron manages to scare himself with that attack.
• Alliterative Name: Boron Brioche.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: When in Hero Mode, his normal attack becomes super-charged so that it damages and peels through all layers of the targeted enemy's armor on hit. It also exploits all weaknesses at the same time.
• BFG: Uses cannons as his gun type when manning a turret.
• Big Eater: He talks about food and eating a lot, and is often stuffing his face during intermissions. He is more self-conscious about it than most examples, however, as shown by how one Link Event he has with Chick even focuses on how hard it can be for him to focus on anything but food, how he asks Hanna to help him with losing weight, and how he expresses to Malt and Mei that he feels like The Load as a result.
• Big Fun: The biggest member of the crew, and also one of the most cheerful and innocent among the kids, rivaled only by Mei.
• Book Dumb: In one Comedies of Steel episode, he's utterly unable to follow Socks' and Jin's explanations of their work to him, as shown by him comedically spiralling through space with a vacant expression while their speech fades into the background.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: He's one of the five children held hostage and used by the rampaging Taranis at the start of the second game.
• Chubby Chef:
  • Cooking in the messroom is a common request board post for him in the intermissions of both games. Also, during the random bonus chances to increase bonds with another character he sometimes asks them what he should be when he grows up, the answer he responds best to is suggesting he become a baker.
  • Some of his link events in the second game bring up his talent for cooking, gained from working at his mother's restaurant. He works out a way to make use of confectionaries Britz had intended to bring as a reunion gift for him which went stale, and his links with Mei focus on his efforts to cook up her hated veggie green peppers in a way she'll enjoy them.
• Death or Glory Attack: Several of his later attacks are incredibly powerful, but come with significant drawbacks above being slow - including inflicting him with Fear (Overload), or delaying all allies (Giga Bazooka).
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: His link events with Jin in the second game feature him seeking to join him in his workout routines, wanting to be as strong as Jin. At one point he accidentally bends a steel bar out of shape trying to perform pull-ups, then bends it BACK into shape to avoid getting in trouble, all without even realizing Jin himself is shocked by his absurd strength.
• Edible Theme Naming: His surname comes from the brioche, a French variety of bread known for being fluffy and rich in flavor. Like Boron himself.
• Farm Boy: He helps out his father on the farm as well as lending his mother a hand working at her restaurant, serving the produce they grow. Like fellow farm boy Malt, he gets wrapped up in the war against the Berman Empire. Also appears prominently in the splash image while farming on the Taranis, happily planting seeds.
• Folk Hero: Much to his chagrin. When he discovers in his Link Events with Wappa in the second game that she has been spreading tales of the children's exploits far and wide. When he proved to be the most popular, she admits that she may have begun slightly embellishing the stories of the Boron Cannon laying waste to the Berman Army by the thousands. Boron isn't exactly thrilled by the news.
• Furry Reminder: One of his idle animations during Intermissions. While chowing down in the kitchen, you can hear him audibly make the "myam-myam-myam" noise cats make when they're enjoying food, and he will periodically stop and groom himself cat-style, licking his hand and wiping his face off.
• Gentle Giant: Despite being the biggest and strongest of the children, Boron is incredibly sweet and prefers avoiding conflict until there's no other option.
• Hero-Worshipper: Perhaps because of the above-mentioned Book Dumb-ness, he deeply admires his more intelligent crewmates Jin and Socks and lavishes praise upon them in their bond conversations and in the Comedies of Steel episodes. His link events with Jin even revolve around Boron calling him "Master" and trying to become his apprentice.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Boron doesn't have a mean bone in his body, but while he isn't stupid per se, he often struggles to follow simple conversations and is constantly distracted by his appetite. He's at least self-conscious about his shortcomings, and several of his link events show him trying to improve himself.
• Kevlard: Implied by his support ability, which reduces the likelihood of injury in battle. Following a steep fall near the end of the game, he remarks that he used his stomach as a cushion.
• The Load: Subverted, while he does often view himself as this trope, his friends are very quick to rebuke that claim, claiming his friendly personality helps keep spirits high, his role in manning a cannon isn't taken for granted, and it's heavily implied he's in charge of maintaining the Taranis' built-in farm. Fully inverted within the game's battle mechanics, where in both games he is by far one of the best damage dealers both for single boss targets and enemy groups.
• Meaningful Name: His first name may be derived from the earth mineral boron, but another possibility fitting for his peace-loving nature is the Buddhist mantra boron, which means to purify oneself of negativity, or keep a precious wish in one's heart.
• Mighty Glacier: His skillset and stat growths place him in this role in battle. Boron boasts the highest attack among the crew and an array of defensive skills, but the lowest speed.
• Nice Guy: Sure, he might not be the most considerate all the time, but he's incredibly kind, generous and wouldn't hurt a fly.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Many of his skills feature multi-hit AoE shots, with the caveat being that cannons having low accuracy means he's expected to miss some of those shots, though this drawback can be patched up by pairing him with Kyle or Britz depending on the game.
• Purposely Overpowered: Yoann intentionally gave him a strong kit simply because he was tired of seeing his boss Hiroshi Matsuyama sacrifice him every playtesting session.
• Stone Wall: He eventually learns a full-battle defensive boost and a heal ability, and as a support unit prevents injuries, making him as close to a 'tank' role as you could get in this game system.
  • Fittingly, the fantasy RPG themed costume DLC kits him out in heavy paladin armor complete with greatshield.
• Stout Strength: Noted in gameplay and some of his link events that he's quite strong despite his soft demeanor. Jin notes that Boron isn't very good at detail work on machines because he puts too much force into tightening the screws. According to the character designer, his body actually has a lot of tight muscle mass as opposed to just being pure fat.
• Strong Family Resemblance: As can be seen in his epilogue slide and the reunion scene between the children and their families, Boron is all but identical to his mother, save his short hair.
• Took a Level in Badass: He loses his crybaby tendencies by the second game, considering all he went through in the first.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A meta example rather than a storyline one: the duo of Boron with Kyle as his support carry most of the world record speedrun on their backs due to Boron's incredibly powerful AoE attacks and Kyle's support ability fixing up his one drawback which is the low accuracy of cannons. Upon blasting their way to the endgame however, both end up as the final two shots in the Soul Cannon due to being the fastest picks in the menu.

Socks Million

Socks Million (ソックス・ミリオン, Sokkusu Mirion)

Voiced by: Miyu Tomita
Species: Caninu (Terrier)
Age: 10 (later 11)

"I-I see! You are quite skillful!"

^{Click here to see Socks as he appears in the first game}

"With the power of this tank… we may actually be able to save everyone!"

The shy intellectual of the Taranis crew, and the first to recognize it for what it is when the group was fleeing the destruction of Petit Mona.

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• Bookworm: He enjoys studying, and can often be found reading during intermissions.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: He's one of the five children held hostage and used by the rampaging Taranis at the start of the second game.
• Call-Forward: His link events with Malt has him discussing the possibility of developing a bipedal tank. Though he deems it impossible to build within the current setting, Malt cheers him up saying that his future children might carry on the work for him. Fast forward to Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, and his descendant Merveille has not only done exactly that twice over with the DAHAK Mk-I and II, but has also entrusted it to her own son, Red Savarin.
• Cannot Talk to Women: He absolutely freezes whenever a girl tries to talk to him. He's immune to this in regards to Hanna, but that's only because— as per Comedies of Steel— he knew her the longest and thus stated that Hanna "isn't just a girl".
• Cute Bookworm: He's a timid, cute-looking boy who nevertheless acts as the inventor for the crew.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Per a sketch from the character designer, Socks seems to especially like oolong tea, which fits given his non-confrontational nature.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Prior to the war, his engineering efforts were largely focused on making toys to impress and amuse his friends in the village. During intermissions, he is the one in charge of upgrades for the Taranis' weaponry and functionality.
• Grenade Launcher: Favors this balance of accuracy and power when he's in the battle roster.
• Heroic Lineage: Not only is he quite the little badass, he's also Merveille's ancestor, thus technically making him Red's ancestor as well.
• Motor Mouth: Tends to run at the mouth when he gets on a roll with his explanations, when he is normally more reserved.
• Nerd Glasses: Sports a round pair.
• Nice Guy: Shy, especially among the girls, but very polite towards others nonetheless.
• Odd Name Out: His doesn't adhere to the near universal Edible Theme Naming because he's the ancestor of a group of characters that also don't.
• Saved by Canon: Gameplay-wise, he can be sacrificed to use the Soul Cannon like any other main character. Story-wise, however, he has to survive the events of the game because he is the ancestor of Merveille Million.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: In his conversations with Wappa in the second game, where she suddenly struts up to him out of the blue and informs Socks that he is now her boyfriend, leaving him too flabbergasted to even respond. In the later followup conversation she admits that she really just wanted the experience of having a boyfriend but doesn't fully -get- what being in love really is. Amusingly, Socks actually understands better when she phrases it as an experiment to learn about a topic and agrees to be her boyfriend.
• Ship Tease: Gets some shippy moments with several characters.
  • In Comedies of Steel, Socks is very pleased and blushes whilst he is imagining Kyle dressing himself as a girl.
  • Vanilla says at the end of their link supports, perhaps they are destined for one another and Socks jokes that this comment is making him feel nervous again.
  • In the second game, Wappa of all girls opens says he can be her "Boyfriend", because he looks "easy", horrifying him. By the end, Socks decides to "go with it" and view his new "relationship" with Wappa as an experiment in social interaction.
• The Smart Guy: The first of the kids to recognize the Taranis as a tank, rather than believing it to be a giant metal monster. He (correctly) guesses in his Link Event with Jin in the second game that the Taranis was built to be used by children in mind just by looking at the height of the control panel.
• Status Effects: His entire toolkit runs on this, from his array of status grenades in his battle skills to his hero mode, his unique ability as a Support member and his Link Attacks.
• Verbal Tic: In the Japanese voice track, he usually ends his sentences with "-na no desu.".
• You Are Already Dead: His Flame Grenade Skill in the second game is considerably more potent than it was in the first game and can increase in damage output and duration as Socks levels, to a point where with some foes it's possible to take them down by simply hitting them once with a flame grenade and letting the burn status effect do the rest of the work.

Mei Marzipan

Mei Marzipan (メイ・マジパン, Mei Majipan)

Voiced by: Hina Kino
Species: Caninu (German Shepherd)
Age: 4 (later 5)

"I can do anything!"

^{Click here to see Mei as she appears in the first game}

"We'll see Grandma and Grandpa soon?"

Malt's imaginative and energetic little sister, and the youngest of the crew.

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• Alliterative Name: Mei Marzipan, like her brother.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of the tank crew by a wide margin, at a mere four years old.
• Big Brother Worship: Very, very close to Malt, and loves him more than anything else in the world. According to an early piece of concept art, her frock is a hand-me-down shirt of his. She loves the rest of the crew, too, and she gives Socks', Boron's and even Kyle's names the onii-chan ("big brother") suffix when referring to them in the Japanese version, along with giving Hanna the title "Hanna onee-chan" ("big sister").^note She refers to Malt himself exclusively as onii-chan in her Japanese voice and dialogue.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: She's one of the five children held hostage and used by the rampaging Taranis at the start of the second game.
• Boys Have Cooties: She doesn't show any outight dislike toward the boys, but two of the most common request board listings for her during Intermissions is to have a girls-only sleepover, or to have girl talk.
• Children Are Innocent: The absolute pinnacle of this trope among the kids. Early in the game, she questions if the Berman took her grandmother because her jam was yummy, and she can later ask one of the other children what the Taranis ate for it to get so big. In-game, you're given the option to enforce this by telling her that the tanks you blow up are completely unmanned. On the other hand, telling her that the tanks you blow up only have bad people in them will lead her to ask, "So, it's okay to blow up bad people?"
• Closet Key: During her Link Events with Chick in the second game, Chick gradually comes to realize she might be bi after she develops a crush on Mei. Which is ironic since Chick during those Link Events was asking Mei for information that might help her woo Mei's brother Malt.
• The Cutie: For God's sake, just look at her!
• Fragile Speedster: She's not the strongest out there, but her skills and Hero Mode can boost the speed of the attacking team tremendously.
• Hidden Depths: Her Link Events with Sheena in the second game have her pick up sewing very quickly, to the extent that she could sew a whole doll by herself.
• Important Hair Accessory: Come the second game, she's inherited Malt's signature cap.
• Literal-Minded: Justified due to her young age, but Mei seems to take certain expressions and idioms at face-value, assuming that boys stay the same height when talking to Chick, and getting upset when she believes that Wappa would literally die if she gets too bored.
• Meaningful Name: "Mei" is a name that can have a number of different meanings in Japanese or Chinese, such as "bright" or "sprout" in Japanese. Mei is the sunny and energetic youngest member of the crew.
• Messy Hair: Her hair looks a little unkempt in places. Apparently, Malt isn't all that good at styling it.
• More Dakka: When manning one of the turrets on the Taranis, her gun type is the low-damage high-accuracy Anti-Air machine gun. She's also the only Machine Gun user with a Skill (Multi-Piercing Shot to be exact) than damages and helps delay all ground enemies as well as aerial foes.
• Nice Girl: Wants to be friends with absolutely everyone, no matter how mean they are.
• Oblivious to Love: In the second game, during her third Link Event with Chick when the latter vaguely hints to her that she might consider dating her in the future instead of Malt, Mei doesn't catch on and interprets Chick as simply affirming their friendship. Justified since Mei is still quite young, innocent, and seemingly doesn't know about romantic crushes.
  Chick: Do you know what sort of girls [Malt] likes?
  Mei: Girls?
  Chick: Yeah. Like, does he like older girls? Younger girls? Cute ones? Pretty ones? Anything?
  Mei: That's tough… Oh!
  Chick: Did you remember something?!
  Mei: Yeah! He always says he likes me! Heehee!
• Precocious Crush: Inverted, she hasn't crushed on anyone, but Chick, who's two years older than her, starts to form a crush on her and even tried to hint as much to her with no success.
• Raised by Grandparents: Lost her and Malt's parents at too young an age to remember, making her this by default.
• Situational Sword: Downplayed, while she has a reasonably versatile set of Skills, she's especially useful when up against ground-level enemies with blue delay icons, since her Multi-Piercing Shot skill can help delay all of them as well as aerial foes, something other Machine Gun users can't do without using a Link Attack.
• Third-Person Person: In the Japanese version, Mei consistently refers to herself with her own name, given her very young age.

Later recruits

Chick and Hack Montblanc

Chick (チック・モンブラン, Chikku Monburan) and Hack Montblanc (ハック・モンブラン, Hakku Monburan)

Chick voiced by: Natsumi Haruse
Hack voiced by: Tomomi Mizuma
Species: Caninu (Welsh Corgi)
Age: 6 (later 7)

Chick on the left, Hack on the right.

^{Click to see Chick and Hack as they appear in the first game}

Chick: Hack, what are we gonna do...? The whole thing's shaking!
Hack: It'll be okay, Chick. We'll find some food!

Chick and Hack are a pair of fun-loving twins who unwittingly stowed-away on the Taranis while looking for food. Hack is a rambunctious prankster while Chick, surprisingly caring for her age, tends to go along with his pranks while making sure he doesn't go overboard.

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• Adorably Precocious Child: Both of them have traits of this, such as playing word ladder as a pastime together.
  • Chick offers to play the role of substitute "mom" to Hack and can be especially caring and social towards the rest of the kids, and has romantic aspirations for Malt in particular. She also likes to view herself as an elegant lady sometimes and wishes to one day be a bride. Additionally, one of her Link Events with Socks implies that she quietly took offense to his comment that she'd be easier for him to talk to because she's closer to Mei's age.
  • Hack often tries to show off a lot of bravado despite being a rather sensitive boy, and even uses the very masculine ore pronoun to refer to himself (whereas all the other boys sans Kyle and Jin use the less aggressive boku instead), implying that he wishes to be seen as strong and capable by everyone around him. His Link Events in the second game have him want to become an adventurer when he grows up.
• Ambiguously Bi: In her third Link Event with Mei in the second game, Chick vaguely implies that she's willing to consider pursuing a relationship with Mei when they're both older if she's unable to become Malt's girlfriend.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: As a consequence of switching from cannons to machine guns in the second game, Hack gains access to more options for stripping away enemies' armor, including a bomb that can take away a whopping four armor ranks at once, and even more so when leveled up.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Both Chick and Hack show variations of this during their Hero Modes. While Chick can continuously hammer out Skills without using a drop of SP in the first game, Hack's attack speed triples whenever he uses his normal attack.
• Badass Cape: Hack wears a piece of cloth around his neck as a makeshift cape.
• BFG: In the first game, Hack favors Cannons when he's manning the turrets. Possibly for the sake of game balance since Vanilla is a cannoneer, Hack's gun type changes to Machine Gun in the second game.
• Composite Character: Both of their toolkits in the second game get revamped to combine their original playstyles with those of some of the other children, in Chick's case getting some of Hanna's healing abilities and in Hack's case getting some Anti-Armor attacks like Mei and Britz.
• Cool Helmet: Both twins wear helmets they found on the battlefield. Chick's helmet has a flower just below its left earpiece while Hack's helmet is missing its left earpiece.
• Cowardly Lion: Despite Hack's goofball demeanor and emotional sensitivity (he outright screams "I want to go home!" when inflicted with the Fear status effect), he has a surprising amount of bravery for someone his age— Shimipan has stated that he gained his scar from attempting to protect Chick, and his Link Events with Britz have him declare that he'll protect Britz from being slandered. In the second game, it's revealed that he wants to be an adventurer when he grows up, and if he's shoved into the Soul Cannon Chamber, his response isn't the pure annoyance or horror expressed by the other kids, but rather a defiant "I'm not givin' up!"
• Discard and Draw: While Chick sticks to the Grenade Launcher in the second game, Hack ditches the Cannon for the Machine Gun, with many of his skills revolving around delaying the enemy further rather than brute force.
• Edible Theme Naming: The twins' surname comes from the dessert Mont Blanc (which itself is named after the tallest mountain in the Alps), a sweetened chestnut puree formed into long, pasta-like strands and topped with whipped cream.
• Everyone Has Standards: Hack in particular notes that while he loves playing pranks, he doesn't want to intentionally make people angry or upset with them. It's just that, unfortunately, the twins aren't exactly the best when it comes to foresight or judgement.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Both of them are goofy troublemakers, but by default, Chick plays the role of the responsible sibling while Hack plays the foolish one, given that Chick aims to be more disciplined compared to her younger twin brother. This also extends to their appearances, given that Hack's attire is more rugged compared to Chick's.
• Grenade Launcher: Chick, meanwhile, prefers grenade launchers.
• Half-Identical Twins: Outside of their outfits and hairstyles, Chick and Hack look practically identical, which has the unfortunate effect of making them hard to tell apart when choosing who to prioritize during intermissions.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: While the twins look virtually identical (outside of the obviously different outfits), Hack is differentiated from his sister by prominent scars on his right cheek and knee as well as his hair being noticeably spikier whenever he's seen without his helmet, compared to Chick's curlier hair. Said helmet is also missing its left earpiece, unlike Chick's.
• Magikarp Power: Hack's Burning Trigger, which gets more powerful the more times you use it. His Frenzy skill in the second game functions the same way.
• Meaningful Name:
  • A baby bird is called a chick, and "chick" is an endearing (albeit dated) way to refer to a young child. That said, her name may also be taken from the French word chic, which means "elegant" per her desire to grow up to be a true lady.
  • "Hack" can mean "to withstand or tolerate something difficult" or "to apply a trick or shortcut to get through something". Hack is a Cowardly Lion and a prankster with a number of tricks up his sleeve.
• More Dakka: In the second game, Hack is a machine gun unit instead of using cannons like in the first game, and as mentioned above, he takes this to its logical conclusion: at maximum level, Frenzy can hit up to 11 times, although you need to use it 8 times in the same battle to get its hitcount that high.
• Naughty Is Good: They're ultimately sweet and harmless, but they absolutely love messing with people.
• Nice Guys: Both of them try their best to be harmless in their antics, and aren't afraid to show that they care about the other kids.
• Not So Above It All: Though Chick claims she just goes along with Hack's pranks, some of her dialogue when she's talked to during interventions implies she actually enjoys doing them just as much as her brother. Her claim to Hanna in their final Link Event that she doesn't like doing pranks may have even been a lie.
• The Prankster: Hack loves pulling pranks on people, while his sister Chick tends to go along with them.
• Precocious Crush: Chick is interested in multiple older boys.
  • Chick (age 6) has one of these towards Malt (age 12) in their Link Events, with the final one having her ask his age, note that he'll be twenty-two when she's sixteen, and anticipating how cool he'll look at that point.
  • She also has this in her link events with Kyle (age 11). In the first game, Chick states she'll became a proper lady that Kyle will fall in love with. In the second game, Chick refers to her outings with Kyle as "dates" and makes him promise to take her to a cafe.
  • More subtly done in her other link events, but Chick thinks Socks (age 10) would be a good escort for her in the first game. Whilst in the second game, she is happy when Britz (age 10) answers that he has no romantic partner.
  • During her Link Events with Mei in the second hame, this trope is inverted, with Chick expressing interest in possibly having a relationship with Mei, who's two years younger than her.
• Promotion to Parent: Chick undergoes this of her own volition.
  • Though she goes along with Hack's antics, she's also made it clear to reel her brother back as much as possible, acting as the temporary mom to him until they are able to rescue their actual parents in the first game.
  • This gets Played for Drama in the second game. Due to Hanna's apparent death, she runs herself ragged trying to fill in for Hanna as the new Team Mom while trying to hide her own emotional baggage. Jin snaps her out of it. This is even integrated into gameplay where her Hero Mode is changed to Hanna's, which is double effect of recovery skills.
• Red Mage: Chick specializes in both healing skills and status grenades as part of her skill set.
• Theme Twin Naming: Both names are single-syllable and end in "ck".
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Hack's default and Swimsuit outfits have him not wear a shirt, the former of which may be due to the circumstances of the Berman occupation (given that the epilogue shows him as fully clothed). Unlike Jin though, Hack's other alternate costumes allow him to avert this.
• White Magician Girl: Chick is more of a mixed attack/support in the first game, but becomes the crew's dedicated healer in the second game in place of Hanna.

Sheena Falafel

Sheena Falafel (シーナ・ファラフェル, Shīna Faraferu)

Voiced by: Noriko Shitaya
Species: Felineko (Russian Blue)
Age: 9 (later 10)

"It was thanks to all of you that I accepted my powers."

^{Click to see Sheena as she appears in the first game}

"Yes! Please… Take me with you!"

A prisoner of war, who was able to escape from an internment camp with the help of a young boy. However, the chaos of the escape means that she's lost track of where it is, and cannot lead the crew of the Taranis directly to them. The Berman army seems particularly interested in recapturing her...

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• Actually Pretty Funny: During a Link Event with Hack, when he admitted to Sheena that he want her to teach him spells so he could use them to pull pranks, Sheena chuckled at the idea.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason she helped Britz settle in when everyone else was anxious about it or outright opposed to it was because he helped her escape from one of the Berman camps.
• Call-Forward: While not explicitly stated, it's implied through Sheena's race and the nature of her powers that she and her people are the predecessors to the Paladins and Oshilasama from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.
• Cats Are Magic: Though in her eyes, the trope's more "Cats Can Do Spells".
• Character Development: She retains some of her soft-spoken and skittish nature, but by the time of the second game, Sheena has left her shell far behind her, now much more open with the crew and happy in her new life. Also reflected in her magical abilites; whereas before she was largely just adding small supplements to the Taranis' power, her very first skill in the second game shows how far she's developed her magic with a huge glowing magic circle causing an earthquake to damage all enemies on the ground.
• Cursed with Awesome: In part due to her own insecurities, this is how she views her own magical powers. Considering what Blutwurst's experiments have involved, it's not hard to see why. The other kids often try to help her grow out of this mindset.
• Edible Theme Naming: Her surname comes from the falafel, a Middle-Eastern fried ball of ground chickpeas or broad beans. While it's not a dessert at first glance (it's usually served hot as street food), it is technically still a fritter, and there do exist dessert-like variations of falafel.
• Insistent Terminology: Informs characters like Hack or Socks that what she performs is spells, rather than "magic".
• Grew a Spine: In between games, being reunited with her mother and older sister, Sheena becomes far more confident in her abilities as a Nono user and drops her nervous demeanor.
• Life Drain: Is able to learn the skill "Syphon Beam", which drains HP from the targeted enemy to heal the Taranis.
• Lonely Doll Girl: She always keeps a doll on her person called Bleuette, made for her by her mother.
• Mage Marksman: A few of her later learned skills feature her enchanting the Taranis, or magically enhancing shots.
• Meaningful Name: "Sheena" is a name of Irish origin roughly meaning "gift from God", being derived from the Scottish Gaelic name "Sìne", which itself has roots in the Old French name of "Jeanne" (a feminine form of "John").
• More Dakka: Favors machine guns when manning the turrets.
• Mystical Waif: Comes from a region known for spell-using Felineko, and is capable of performing a few spells herself. In-game, however, her magical ability pales in comparison to the sheer destructive power of the Taranis, so she mostly fights using the gun turrets like the other children. Her support skill and link attacks both restore SP.
• Nice Girl: She may come off as skittish sometimes, but she's still very kind and gentle towards others.
• Percent Damage Attack: Her Distortion skill in the second game, which halves an enemy's current health level. Predictably, it cannot be used against bosses.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy: All she has left following the Berman Empire's invasion is Bleuette, the doll her mother made her. She's often seen quietly rocking her to sleep during intermissions.
• Ship Tease: Subtle, but Sheena and Britz have some romantic undertones to their story. Taken overboard in the second game, Sheena's Link Events with Britz culminate in her suggesting that her family come to visit his family so she can help get his little sister, Frita, out of her reclusive shell. The True Ending has her fulfilling her promise, using her magic to make her doll Bluette dance for Frita, as well as jogging beside Britz during the race.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: She has blue hair and isn't exactly the most talkative or confident among the twelve. She overcomes this by the second game, having Took a Level in Badass (see below). Sheena has overcome much of her previous shyness, even coming up with a way to help Britz's little sister Frita overcome her own.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the second game, due to being more confident in herself and having had more time to train her magical abilities, she's gotten much more powerful spells at her disposal. This is reflected in how in the first game, her skills were a mix of Machine Gun abilities and her spells, whereas in the second game, ALL of her skills are spells. She also switches from machine gun to a grenade launcher in the second game to further boost her damage capabilities.
• Useless Useful Spell: Her Arcane Shot skill fires an enchanted shot from her machine gun with a low chance to cut away five layers of an enemy's armor in one shot... but the chance is so low and the skill so SP costly that you're almost always better off just using her much earlier, less costly skills to strip away armor two layers at a time instead.
• White Mage: The most healing-oriented character aside from Hanna. Two of her unique skills gradually recover HP and protect the Taranis from Scratch Damage, respectively.

Jin Macchiato

Jin Macchiato (ジン・マキアート, Jin Makiāto)

Voiced by: Yukihiro Nozuyama
Species: Caninu (Basset Hound)
Age: 11 (later 12)

"Wow… I've never seen a machine like this before!"

^{Click here to see Jin as he appears in the first game}

"Just wait! I swear on my tail... I'll never forgive you!!"

The son of a factory worker, who grew up surrounded by machinery and gained a knack for repairing it as a result. When his father is executed by the Berman Empire (specifically, Flam Kish), he manages to commandeer a small tank and sets out for revenge, but it's on the verge of exploding when he crosses paths with the Taranis and opts to join its crew.

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• Badasses Wear Bandanas: The toughest crew member in terms of mental fortitude, and he wears some form of bandana even in his dlc costumes. His new outfit in the second game continues the tradition, though he's traded the do-rag style for a headband instead.
• Bring It: Surprisingly, his reaction to seeing the Vanargand reawaken isn't the fear or shock of the other kids:
  Jin: Hah! This is interesting…
• Character Development: Grows out of his prejudice towards the Berman as a whole, gains a friendship with Britz, and loses his desire for revenge against Flam Kish. Compared to how angry and eager he was to kill Flam during their first encounter, it's telling that, following the second time they clash (and as he witnesses how pitiful she really is), he just sadly remarks on her bullheadedness and how he never wants to see her again. Even after Flam dies in a freak explosion, he notes that he doesn't feel any different about it.
• Character Exaggeration: In the first game proper, he's by far the most focused and no-nonsense kid on the Taranis. In Comedies of Steel, however, his hatred of the Berman goes from simply seething to outright maniacal, and his love of craftsmanship is exaggerated to the point that he gives his tools nicknames. He also switches from his usual introverted self to being more hammy and dramatic.
• Companion Cube: He is very emotionally attached to his tools, given they were given to him by his father. Comedies of Steel exaggerates this to the point where he gives them nicknames^note His screwdrivers are called Paul and Emil, his wrench is called Edgar, and his hammer is called Adam, holds them in his arms like teddy bears while sleeping, and becomes extremely distraught when other people (like Socks) handle them. While the second game canonizes this quirk of his, it tweaks it to be more in-character for Jin's reserved personality— his Link Events with Wappa reveal that his affection for his tools is an embarrassing childhood habit, with the eavesdropping Wappa promptly using this fact as blackmail material.
• Edible Theme Naming: His surname comes from caffé macchiato ("stained coffee"), an Italian dessert coffee known for mixing espresso with a small amount of foamed milk.
• Friend to All Children: Granted, he's a kid himself, but he's surprisingly good at handling the younger members of the crew, as shown in this art with him and Mei.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite being implied to be the crew member most knowledgeable and involved in maintaining and repairing the Taranis, he has no healing skills which, being a tank, presumably involve repairs. That said, he does have access to the "Reinforce" skill used to slowly decrease damage to the Taranis, and the second game gives him a skill to boost the Taranis' shields.
• Grenade Launcher: His weapon of choice, though his skills almost border on Cannon territory with stronger attacks that only work against ground enemies. He switches it for cannons in the second game.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his brash, assertive nature, he's rather well-adjusted and gets along well with even the younger kids, and his anger ultimately comes from a place of caring.
• Meaningful Name: "Jin" is a name found across multiple east Asian cultures, with it sometimes meaning "truth" in Japanese and Korean. Jin is blunt and upfront about his feelings and in how he talks with the rest of the children.
• Mr. Fixit: Growing up in a factory setting has given him an impressive skill for fixing and maintaining machinery, which he puts to good use once he joins the Taranis's crew.
• Noble Bigot: Among all the children, Jin is the most openly prejudiced against the Berman, no doubt due to his father's execution at their hands. He's not fully consumed by it though, as seen when he's willing to spare Flam after she's been defeated and when he gradually warms up to Britz just like the other kids do.
  • In the exaggerated parody version of Jin in the Comedies of Steel shorts, he proclaims that he's figured out a way they can fire the Soul Cannon without having to sacrifice any of the kids… by capturing Berman soldiers and using THEM to fire it instead.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: In addition to being the most angry at Berman he can also be harsh with other childen, often telling them to work harder if they don't want to die - however he does it not out of general pushiness but because he cares for them and does not want to see them die as well. He's also much more affected by losing his parents than he lets on but he bottles it all in.
• Tragic Bigot: His prejudice towards the Berman seems to have stemmed purely from the trauma of his father's execution, as shown by how he eventually warms up to Britz and lets go of his desire for revenge against Flam Kish.
• Tragic Keepsake: Seeing how his tools are a gift from his deceased father, it's no surprise that he's so attached to them.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: In contrast to how none of the other kids have really done anything concerning out of their own volition prior to the war, Jin is introduced as having a desire for bloody revenge against the Berman Army, along with personally commandeering a tank to do so.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Even after Flam Kish's apparent death by explosion, Jin remains as miserable as he was before, albeit having gained some maturity from the experience. This carries over to the second game, as he rejoins when both Malt and Vanilla are being consumed by their own desires for vengeance, and he feels it's his duty to talk them out of it due to his own experience with this.
• Vocal Dissonance: His voice is rather deep sounding for his age.
• Walking Shirtless Scene:
  • Being a mechanic, he wears little more than a pair of loose-fitting white overalls.
  • He retains this fashion sense across various DLC costumes, the school uniform costume set depicting him as a sarashi-wearing bancho while his fantasy RPG costume is a berserker.
• What the Hell, Hero?: All children are disturbed by it, but Jin's the one who openly calls Malt out on his obsession with revenge in the second game.
• You Killed My Father: Says this word-for-word when he and the crew encounter Flam Kish.

Wappa Charlotte

Wappa Charlotte (ワッパ・シャルロット, Wappa Sharurotto)

Voiced by: Hiyori Nitta
Species: Caninu (Spaniel)
Age: 8 (later 9)

"You guys don't seem very dependable, but that's okay! I'll be your leader, so let's go save them!"

^{Click here to see Wappa as she appears in the first game}

"Identity? I'm Wappa! I came to get my minions, so move it!"

An enthusiastic girl who lives in a treehouse that the Taranis accidentally knocks down during its journey. She used to be the leader of a group of children from the village of Mudi before the Berman invasion, and is eager to become the leader of the Taranis crew too.

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• Accidental Public Confession: In one episode of Comedies of Steel, when trying to bust Boron for sneaking food from the kitchen, Wappa accidentally reveals to Hanna the existence of her "Secret Nibblers Club". The club was forcibly disbanded shortly after.
• Adaptational Badass: Her introduction in the manga adaptation was changed from the Taranis accidentally destroying her treetop home to her blowing up enemy tanks in her own hijacked Berman tank while wearing their outfit for added insult, along with showing up to help the Taranis by foiling Blutwurst's attempt at a Sadistic Choice.
• Beware the Silly Ones: You'd think someone so cocky and adamant to call themselves the leader of the bunch would likely be a coward when faced with actual danger, right? You'd be wrong— despite never dropping her plucky demeanor even in the worst of circumstances, Wappa is nevertheless as brave and willing to get her hands dirty as the rest of the crew in battle, if not more.
• Blood Knight: Implied. Unlike the other kids, her character portrait in battle depicts her as smiling, even outside of Hero Mode.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: It's obvious that she could be an effective leader of the Taranis given how headstrong and sociable she is, but what she lacks is humility and a sense of responsibility— whereas Malt himself has more than enough of both.
• The Charmer: Perhaps her biggest talent is her sheer charisma despite (or maybe because of) her lack of social filter, hench why she was able to rally her village's local children to be her "minions", how she was able to quickly form bonds with the Taranis' crew, and why many of her skills are centered around filling the Link Gauge.
• Collector of the Strange: She likes collecting shiny beetle corpses.
• Combination Attack: Most of her skillset is based around this, from in battle skills that increase the link gauge just a little faster as a side effect, to her support effect being a quicker Link Gauge buildup. Everything she does is in service to pumping out those link attacks.
• Edible Theme Naming: Her surname comes from the charlotte, a bread pudding comprised of stewed fruit or custard covered in a mold of bread, biscuits or sponge cake.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Her hair completely covers her eyes at all times. In one of her Link Events with Britz, she admits she keeps her hair like that to prevent people from being able to tell if she's sleeping or not. Even her concept art has her eyes blurred out.
• Free-Range Children: Lives alone in a treehouse on the outskirts of a town in the first game, in the second game she further upgrades this trope, becoming a backpacking solo world traveler at just the age of 9.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Most newcomers join the crew with no bonds whatsoever, or one at most. Wappa however gains one rank with the entire crew immediately upon joining, reflecting her chatty nature and complete lack of a social filter. Partly may be due to her being a latecomer and having to catch up with the rest, but it also handily allows her to make use of her heavily link-attack focused kit with anyone right away. This occurs again in the second game with two exceptions, Vanilla who is a stranger to her and a bit more standoffish, and Malt who is in the middle of his Heroic BSoD at the time.
• Girly Run: Her dash animation in the second game has her pull this off through skipping with confidence. Likely justified by the fact her new default outfit is a dress instead of her overalls, and thus Wappa got in the habit of running in a way that preserves her modesty.
• The Heart: Takes up this role in the second game, after a year of solo travels she's matured a great deal and adopted a philosophy of spreading peace and love. Her introductory chapter is spent checking in with everyone aboard the tank help them express their concerns over Malt's behavior as well as their grief over Hanna. She's still the plucky Leader Wannabe we all know and love, though.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bratty, self-absorbed and overzealous, sure, but she does have her own way of expressing kindness towards others.
• Leader Wannabe: Almost immediately declares herself leader of the crew upon joining, which vexes Malt throughout their bond conversations.
• Meaningful Name: "Wappa" has a few meanings in Japanese. The ones that probably fit our Wappa might be "child" or "to yell loudly".
• Minor Living Alone: She's found by the crew living in a treehouse near the outskirts of a village that was ransacked by the Berman, but her dialogue suggests she wasn't from that village and had been living in that treehouse before the village was attacked. Also of note, she is the only other kid aside from Jin whose motivation isn't to rescue her parents: she wants to rescue the gang of village kids she was the ringleader of.
• Motor Mouth: She's extremely chatty. Even reflected in one of her battle skills, Chit-Chat.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: She's adopted the aesthetic and a peace loving mentality in the second game, and her new mindset ends up being a boon to the other crew members as she rejoins the team at time when emotional tensions are running high.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Energetic, self-absorbed, and the most likely to make a wisecrack in a terrifying situation.
• Precocious Crush: Not as apparent as Mei, but both guys she shows interest in Kyle and Socks, are slightly older than her: Kyle by three years and Socks by two years.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In the second game, Wappa spouts one directly towards Cayenne right before the Hax AI loads the Tarascus' core into the Soul Cannon in the Golden Ending. As a bonus, it's a subtle Ironic Echo towards Cayenne's earlier ramblings to the children.
  Wappa: You ready to learn YOUR lesson?!
• Raised by the Community: Though she technically lived by herself in the treehouse, a link event with Kyle strongly implies the adults of her village discreetly shared the role of taking care of her. There is no mention of her parents anywhere though she admits in one link event to being an orphan.
• Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: Wappa is this to any boy she is interested in.
  • In the end of their link events, after Kyle says he'll teach her how to dress and clean herself properly, Wappa takes this to mean Kyle is her boyfriend now.
  • In her link event with Socks in the second game, Wappa proclaims him her boyfriend because she felt he would be the easiest boy to hook up with.
• Ship Tease: Wappa has some romantic moments with at least two male characters.
  • Humorously in her link events with Kyle in the first game, after Kyle promises to teach Wappa how to handle her personal hygiene , Wappa believes that Kyle is in love with her and that they are now a romantic couple. More dramatically in the second game, she asks Kyle what falling in love is like, though the link event ends right before Kyle can answer.
  • Hilariously invoked in the second game. In their Link Events, Wappa tells Socks he can be her "boyfriend" because he looks "easy"; keep in mind, Socks can barely talk to girls and Wappa is extremely outgoing. By the end, Wappa and Socks agree to keep their relationship going, stating she finds them pretty compatible; even if they really don't know what they are doing.
• The Slacker: A lot of her link events usually end with the character she's interacting with subtly calling her out on her unwillingness to help out around the Taranis.
• Small Name, Big Ego: She declares herself the "leader" of the Taranis crew and acts as such but doesn't really do any leadership and the rest of the crew don't treat her like one. Doesn't mean her courage and confidence is all for show, though.
• Stepford Smiler: In one of her link events with Malt, she admits to being an orphan and a lot of her behavior is a means to prevent herself from dwelling on that fact too much.
• They Just Dont Get It: Don't waste your precious breath telling her that nobody agreed to make her the leader. She's already decided it for herself.
  Vanilla: Wappa, I have heard the truth! It was never decided that you would be leader here!
  Wappa: Huh, maybe notice hasn't made its way 'round to everyone yet. Forget about that, though. Tell me how to be president!
  Vanilla: If you are simply going to pretend to be leader here, why not do the same and pretend to be president?
  Wappa: Because that'd be silly, duh.
• Tiny Tyrannical Girl: Can't get any more short and bossy than instantly declaring yourself the leader and liberally calling everyone else your "minions".
• Took a Level in Kindness: When she rejoins the crew in the second game, she's become less bossy and more empathetic and emotionally intelligent. So much so that when she preached to Malt in a link event about the importance of how a leader should look out for the emotional wellbeing of their teammates, Malt himself was impressed by Wappa's growth.

Britz Strudel

Britz Strudel (ブリッツ・シュトゥルーデル, Burittsu Shuturūderu)
Tank: Werther (ウェルテル, Weruteru)

Voiced by: Yūichi Iguchi
Species: Caninu (Doberman)
Age: 9 (later 10)

"I'm ready to fight, if that's what it takes to defend all I cherish."

^{Click here to see Britz as he appears in the first game}

"I am Berman… You don't need to force yourself to talk to me. Once I return the favor for saving my life, I'll be on my way..."

A child soldier from the Berman Empire who helped Sheena escape from the Felineko internment camps, he is the final member to join the Taranis crew.

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• Affectionate Nickname: If he bonds enough with Chick, you find out his little sister Frita calls him 'Britzer'.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: If you fail to meet the requirements to get him back on your side, then Britz will commit suicide by self-destructing his own tank due to the Taranis crew being unable to kill him themselves.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: He's one of the five children held hostage and used by the rampaging Taranis at the start of the second game.
• Broken Pedestal: For Berman as a whole. Britz still thinks fondly of some aspects of Berman society, but the hardships he and his family have faced under their regime have given him a jaded perspective on the country and the their hand in the war. Going by some conversations had with him, he actually hates the Berman side more than some of the Gasco children do, hence why he became a Defector from Decadence.
  • His conversations with Vanilla in the second game have him clarify his view of each country: whereas he acknowledges that Berman medicine and technology is more advanced, he prefers Gasco for its more liberating and luxurious culture, compared to how militaristic the Berman Empire is.
• Child Soldier: Even more so than the other children, who join the war voluntarily as an independent faction. Britz was officially conscripted into the Berman Army after his father's execution.
• Commonality Connection: His Link Events with Jin, where Jin realizes they actually have a lot in common as kids who lost their fathers to the war.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His father, a Berman spy in Gasco, was executed as a traitor to his country, and Britz along with his mother and sister were persecuted as a result. Britz's conscription into the army was the only chance his family had to clear the black mark on their name.
• Defector from Decadence: He first helped Sheena escape from Blutwurst's camp before completely bailing on the Berman army as a whole, just as his father did before him. Taken a step further in the ending to the first game where, after finding out that his family fled to Gasco anyway, he stays there with them and never returns to Berman at all.
• Depending on the Artist: He sometimes has a red armband on his uniform. It's uncommon when he is drawn, but is very prominent and noticeable on his actual model.
• Dueling Player Characters / Fighting Your Friend: In the first game, he's the main boss of Chapter 11. In shock, the Taranis crew is in a permanent state of Depression throughout the entire fight, and the Soul Cannon is disabled.
• Edible Theme Naming: His surname comes from the strudel, a desert pastry of Austrian origin made up of thin layers with a sweet (but occasionally savory) filling.
• Family Theme Naming: Britz and his parents Spritz and Linza all have a "Z" in their names. Britz and his father Spritz both have first names that end in "-ritz". Britz's sister is also named "Frita", only one letter off from "fritz".
• Forced into Evil: He was more or less forced to join the Berman army as consequence for his father turning traitor. He's forced to do it again when his family is threatened, which may or may not stick depending on the player's actions.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Outside of Sheena, nobody (not even Wappa) initially wants him to even join the group, something he himself is fully aware of. This can be alleviated if he socializes with everyone enough.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: When he's recruited, he starts with a single bond with Sheena, reflecting the trust she has in him that nobody else does (not even Wappa, who starts bonded with everyone else).
• Gave Up Too Soon: Hax uses his family as hostages to force Britz to cooperate with him, but he leaves the crew to join Hax mere minutes before the crew free their families, with Britz's mother and sister among them. Only becomes worse if the kids didn't get know Britz enough to recognize his family, as Britz's fate is then sealed despite having been so close to reuniting with them.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a particularly vicious forehead scar that, combined with his gloomy demeanor, doesn't help his case.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: In spite of the above, at the end of Chapter 10, Britz abandons the Taranis crew to rejoin The Berman Empire. Assuming he has at least ten levels of affinity with everyone on the tank and the kids are more aware of his family, then he'll leave the Berman again to rejoin the team after his boss fight, this time for good.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: A lot of his dialogue has him putting himself down for having served the Berman army and feeling unworthy of the other children's trust or sympathy because of it. Many of his Link Events revolve around him growing out of this mindset with the help of the other kids.
• Hidden Depths: Is very good with machinery, as Socks and Jin find out over the course of their interactions.
• Interface Spoiler: In the first game, if you unlock use of the Soul Cannon while he's in your party, you'll notice that you can't actually use Britz to fire it, hinting at his potential Plotline Death later in the game. You can use him for it if he rejoins the party after his boss fight, however.
• Meaningful Name: His tank takes its name from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, a story about how the eponymous young man falls in love with a woman ("Charlotte") despite knowing how she is already engaged to someone ("Albert"). After gaining a friendship with the two before eventually leaving them out of grief, the novel ends with a heartbroken Werther choosing to commit suicide under the belief that one of the three has to die to solve the love triangle (and being unwilling to even want to murder Albert), with Charlotte's response being that "[her] life was despaired of". It lines up rather well with Britz's story if the player fails to save him: believing that his friendship with the children of the Taranis can never truly be (due to him being Trapped in Villainy per his concern for his mother and sister), he assumes that there's no way out for him besides suicide. And just like Charlotte, the children of the Taranis will be heartbroken if he goes through with it.
• More Dakka: Uses a machine gun much like Kyle, Mei, and Sheena. When in Hero Mode in the first game, his normal attacks go from a three-hit combo to a six-hit combo.
• Nice Guy: He's carrying a lot of baggage from his time in the Berman Army, but he still manages to be a very polite and approachable boy. He even reminds Mei of her own big brother.
• Not Helping Your Case: Many of the other children reasonably suspect he's a Berman spy when he comes aboard. In truth he has nothing but good intentions, but he isolates himself from the crew and refuses to ever speak up in his own defense, believing he doesn't deserve to fraternize with the people his homeland has oppressed. If the player doesn't help him to socialize with the crew, it ends in tragedy.
• Ornamental Weapon: He carries a pistol and a short saber on each hip, but since the battles of the game all take place against massive enemy tanks and airships he has little opportunity to use them. He does draw the pistol in his Comedies of Steel episode, out of sheer terror upon realizing he's being stalked by Jin. The first game's secret movie also shows him wielding his pistol in some sort of conflict, but that scene ended up getting omitted as more information regarding the second game came out.
• Plotline Death: Britz is the only party member who can undergo this instead of just dying via the Soul Cannon, and unless the player meets certain in-game requirements, he will die no matter what.
• Poor Communication Kills: At one point Britz is caught disassembling a part of the Taranis' engine; when Jin confronts him about it, Britz explains that the part was made from finicky Berman components that were difficult to repair and liable to explode if improperly maintained. He apologizes for not telling anyone beforehand, since they were suspicious of him already. He also goes out alone to scavenge replacement parts for the one he tampered with, which has far worse consequences as he's seen and reported by a fleeing Berman scout.
• Punny Name: He's a swift machine gun-user whose unusually offensive attacks are focused on stunning enemies and breaking through enemy armor. In other words, he uses blitz tactics.
• Putting on the Reich: As a Berman soldier.
• Ship Tease: Subtle, but Britz and Sheena have some romantic undertones to their story, with Britz constantly feeling the need to keep her safe and even committed treason to help her escape an internment camp. In the second game, his Link Events with Sheena culminate in her suggesting that her family come to visit his family so she can help get his little sister, Frita, out of her reclusive shell. The True Ending has him jogging beside Sheena during the race on his own volition with evn Wappa noting they seem more like jogging buddies. Also, a lot of Britz's "happiness" requirements in intermissions is wishing to see Sheena's happiness come true.
• Shock and Awe: Stun is his signature status effect, applied by many of his skills as well as his Link Attack if he is the secondary member, or normal attacks when in hero mode in the second game.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: The only hint you have of his existence is the brief character info seen on the official website. He is not seen in any trailers and took over 5 months for him to make a proper appearance in Comedies of Steel.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: He keeps his Berman army uniform even after defecting, though presumably as with the other children it's because that's the only clothing he has. One segment of his Comedies of Steel episode draws attention to this, after which Kyle offers to fix the issue by swiping Malt's outfit while he's in the bath and giving it to Britz. He still wears it in the epilogue, though not in the secret movie.
• Suicide by Cop: This is his main intention in fighting the Taranis crew. Depending on his affinity level, he'll either go through with taking his own life or find new resolve in fighting with the heroes again.
• Survivor Guilt: One of his random conversation topics in the second game during intermissions sees him apologize to the friend he's speaking to, wishing Hanna had been rescued instead of him. This also gets brought up in his Link Event with Kyle.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Jin in particular has a grudge against him and accuses Britz of betrayal the very next time they encounter enemy forces.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: If your health is low enough during his fight, then Britz will give you free heals when in his Despair state.
• Token Heroic Orc: The only Berman in the game who objects to his country's invasion of Gasco enough to switch sides. Whether he stays heroic or not depends on how high his affinity is with the other children.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: In spite of the current, dire situation in the second game, Britz looks and acts much happier than he was a year before, no doubt because he has his mother and sister back and he's living as far away from Berman as possible. His icon even has him smiling when it was just a dour look last game.
• Troubled Child: His dad was coldly executed for treason against the Berman Empire, his family name was persecuted and shunned as a result, he left to be conscripted into the army and watched all the horrors his home country committed in the name of "glory", and in the game itself he gets tricked into betraying his new friends and potentially commits suicide as a result of it. While he still tries hard to be calm and approachable to the other kids on the Taranis, his war experiences have given him a gloomy demeanor and some self-esteem issues (as well as a brutal forehead scar), and he feels like him having served a fascist army makes him unworthy of anyone's compassion or respect. And he's carrying all of this baggage at the ripe old age of nine.

Introduced in Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2

Vanilla Muscat

Vanilla Muscat (バニラ・マスカット, Banira Masukatto)

Voiced by: Mami Fujita
Species: Felineko (Russian Blue)
Age: 11

"I'm Vanilla. Nice to meet you all."

The First Daughter of Gasco, Vanilla joins the crew on their second journey to stop the rampaging Taranis.

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• Back from the Dead: If you fulfill the conditions necessary, then Malt can save her soul at the start of Chapter 11, with Vanilla having seemingly no memory of her apparent Suicide Attack forced upon her by Cayenne.
• Blue Blood: She's the daughter of the president of Gasco.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: She ends up falling victim to Cayenne's mind control spell to force her to set off a bomb powerful enough to kill her while destroying the Exo-Taranis' engines at the end of Chapter 10.
• Counter-Attack: Her Hero Mode allows her to act immediately whenever damage is inflicted upon the player.
• Critical Hit Class: She uses a cannon with a high crit chance, one of her skills is a volley of cannonfire with a boosted crit rate, and both her Support skill and Link Attack increase the chance of dealing crit damage.
• Desperation Attack: Her "Revenge Shot" skill, which inflicts the more damage the less health your tank has.
• Determinator: She's very headstrong and determined, and it even factors in her skillset - her skill Determination allows her to shake off injury and fear off herself.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Shows up in the Secret Movie unlocked in the first game.
• Edible Theme Naming: A twofer: her first name comes from a spice obtained from the pods of vanilla orchids that's commonly used as a flavour additive, and her surname comes from a family of grapes used for making wine.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Her first link event with Malt has her evaluating him compared to the stories of the wise, noble war hero who singlehandedly led a ragtag group of kids she's heard so much about... and finds him disappointingly normal.
• Family Theme Naming: She and her sister Cannelle both take their given names from plant-based spices used for desserts.
• Foil: Despite them both being heroes and amicable to each other, Vanilla contrasts Hanna in every way that matters, being the most consistently resolute child on the Taranis in contrast to how Hanna is the consistently empathic. Vanilla also doubles as a Contrasting Replacement Character of sorts, given how she takes Hanna's spot in the playable lineup.
  • Hanna is a gentle All-Loving Heroine farm girl-next-door, while Vanilla is the daughter of the nation's president.
  • Hanna is gentle, extroverted and doesn't harbor that much anger towards Jihl, whereas Vanilla is blunt, less social and very much focused on retribution and justice.
  • Their aspirations for the future oppose one another: while both want to help others, Hanna wants to help individuals as a doctor ever since Malt experienced the loss of his parents, while Vanilla wants to help Gasco as a whole as president just like her father before her.
  • In the first game, Hanna was a Grenade Launcher character with a skillset based around healing and removing negative status ailments, along with applying milder negative status effects to enemies— Smoke merely causes them to miss their shots and Weakness merely nerfs their attack— emphasizing how she hates direct conflict the most out of all the children. Vanilla is instead a Cannon user with a skillset entirely based around offense and damage-dealing, with her Hero Mode being to retaliate immediately as the tank takes damage, emphasizing how aggressively she wants to deal with her foes.
  • In the second game, the two have their own Plotline Deaths, both of which have to be undone to achieve the Golden Ending. Hanna's early-game death is due to circumstantial factors, with Jihl's attack on the Tarascus subjecting her to a Teleporter Accident. Vanilla's late-game death is due to orchestrated factors, with Cayenne's brainwashing spells subjecting her to a Psychic-Assisted Suicide. Hanna's death is undone by the Belenos resurrecting her if all the other children are simply alive, and Vanilla's death is undone by Maestro rewriting reality if some of the children bonded enough with her.
• Girly Run: Her running animation looks like this.
• Hot-Blooded: Her website description states that she's prone to being hard-headed and impulsive, but states that she's aware of those flaws and feels them to be personal failings.
• It's Personal: The Taranis' rampage kills her father, leading her to seek its destruction and requiring the other children to cool her down and remind her that their innocent friends are onboard. This continues if she learns the truth, that her teacher Cayenne had killed her father beforehand and assumed his identity, driving her to seek revenge on him instead.
• Mistaken for Romance: Gets quite a bit a Ship Tease with Malt with the two looking to each other to help them through their grief (Vanilla losing her father and Malt losing Hanna) and struggling together; though a lot of outsiders believing they are a young couple going through a lover's spat which both deny.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Whenever a disagreement breaks out among the group she tends to take the cynical stance, and she is most the likely to agree with Resolute Malt when decisions come up.
• Plotline Death: She undergoes this for the second game, as the only party member who can have this instead of just dying via the Soul Cannon, and unless the player meets certain in-game requirements, she will die no matter what.
• Proper Lady: She's well-educated, comes from the family of the head of the state, and aside from her impulsiveness she is usually polite and well-mannered.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to her elder sister's blue, as Vanilla is impulsive and emotional while Canelle was always reserved and collected. Their outfits (Vanilla's red jacket, Canelle's blue uniform) even match their roles in the pair.
• You Killed My Father: She's driven by her own desire to avenge her father's death, which causes her to stow away on the Tarascus and chase after Jihl along with other children.

The Secret of the Taranis (ALL SPOILERS FOR FUGA 1 UNMARKED!)

In General

Jeanne (ジャンヌ, Jannu)

Voiced by: Haruna Ikezawa (all incarnations)
Species: Human AI (pseudo-Juno)
Age: 2000+

The "consciousness" of the Taranis, who was split into two different programs long before the events of the game.

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• Artificial Intelligence: Acts as the AI of the Taranis, designed to protect and guide its users. She's distinct from the Taranis' internal systems, however.
• Character Death: At the end of the first game, the Taranis sacrifices its life force to fuel the Soul Cannon, and as a result, the energy needed to keep her functioning as an AI runs out completely. While she's mentioned multiple times in the second game, she never makes an appearance— instead, the Taranis is reactivated through Jihl's control over it and is later fueled by the Tarascus' core in its Exo-Taranis state.
• Foil: To Yurlungur from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. While both are advanced AI whose names and personas take from significant figures from their countries of origin, Yurlungur came into existence when Australia's existing Juno needed to develop a way to communicate with humans, while Jeanne was a Juno-like program created by mankind for the sake of helping to create anti-Juno weapons. In contrast to how Yurlungur is decidedly stoic and avoids direct interference with the outside world unless prompted (note that she only proposed the Reset as an option), Jeanne is far more openly emotive, and manipulated both the children and the Berman Empire for the grand purpose of achieving her revenge against the Vanargand.
• Literal Split Personality: She split in two as a side-effect of the Taranis' original sealing, with each half receiving one part of her overall programming: her "Radio" half received her programming to strategize and determine how to defeat the Vanargand, while her "Girl of Light" half followed her programming to protect the crew (with unsuccessful results). At the climax of the first game, this is reversed and Jeanne is restored to her original self.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Jeanne was left in the dark about what happened to the world once the Taranis was sealed away, and even her belief that Juno replaced the humans with the Caninu and Felineko was an educated guess on her behalf, true as it is. Likewise, supplementary material for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter has stated that all Titano-Machina were sealed away by Juno to cleanse the planet of their scourge, but it's implied that Jeanne interpreted the Taranis' sealing as a punishment toward it and her specifically, which may have spurred on her desire to fight the Vanargand again and prove herself.
• Meaningful Name: The intent of the Taranis was to "liberate" mankind from the growing disparity of power caused by humankind's over-dependence on Juno and the resulting Titano-Machina arms race, hence why Jeanne herself was named after a famous liberator in French history.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Her namesake is that of Joan of Arc, having been confirmed to have been made in France.
• Really 700 Years Old: Ages listed in her incarnations' profiles are more like indications of their mental outlook rather than chronological ages (and the Japanese version outright calls them "setting ages"), as being a humanity-made AI Jeanne is actually millennia-old and predates the Caninu and Felineko races' existence.
• Significant Double Casting: The fact that Haruna Ikezawa voices both the Radio Woman and the Girl of Light alludes to how they're meant to be two parts of a whole.
• Spaceship Girl: A variation as she's a Tank Girl instead, but fits otherwise.
• Virtual Ghost: Downplayed. The second game reveals that the unnamed Female Engineer who worked at Crusade designed Jeanne to use her appearance as a physical template, but aside from that there's no indication that Jeanne is an outright AI copy of her.
• Walking Spoiler: Her true nature and role in the story isn't revealed until the climax.

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The Radio Woman

The Radio Woman (ラジオの女, Raijo no Onna)^note described in Jeanne's reports as her "primary thought", given the name "Black Jeanne" in the game's internal files

AI setting age: 36

"Believe in the Taranis' power and fight!"

A strange voice on a radio set that initially warned the children to run during the initial Berman attack and leading them to find the Taranis inside the cave. She also acts as a guide on what they should do and how the Taranis works, but does she have ulterior motives?

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• Artificial Intelligence: The AI of the Taranis to be precise. Specifically the calculating and methodical half that was devoted solely to destroying the Vanargand.
• Big Bad Friend: More like Greater-Scope Villain Friend - the helpful voice on the radio that guides and supports the children actually orchestrated the war that ravaged their home.
• Blood Knight: All it desires is to destroy the Vanargand at its full power. Manipulating the children and the Berman Empire to bring this about means nothing to it as long as it can fight against the Lost God.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite starting the conflict through her manipulations of both the heroes and villains of the story, the Radio Woman has some moments where she expresses sympathy towards some characters or disgust towards the Berman Army:
  • She expresses genuine horror and disgust at Blutwurst's actions, calling him a monster and ordering the kids to put an end to his cruel experiments.
  • When fighting Flam Kish the second time, her usual insistence on using the Soul Cannon is different— she seems to show pity for the Berman officer:
    Radio Woman: She is possessed by hatred… Use the Soul Cannon and free her from this madness!
  • The last of the Jeanne Archives confirms that Jeanne (as the Radio Woman) always desired for there to be an outcome where she was able to defeat the Vanargand and ensure that all the children survived, hence why she ran numerous simulations to find the one that would lead her to her goal.
• It's the Only Way: Whenever the Taranis' HP falls below 50% during a major battle, the Radio Woman will try and convince you that using the Soul Cannon is the only way to win the fight, though there's nothing stopping you from ignoring her and soldier on with using traditional methods. Invoked due to this half of the AI wanting to cut through anything and everything just to get another shot at the Vanargand faster.
• Knight Templar: Technically speaking, at no point in the story does this half of Jeanne deviate from her original programming, despite how she masterminded the conflict— her purpose was to help humanity overcome Juno by any means necessary, and that would include defeating the Vanargand once again.
• Laughing Mad: As the children get closer to the Vanargand, the Radio Woman's sane and caring facade starts to crack, with her no longer able to contain her excitement and even occasionally letting out deranged laughter.
• Manipulative Bastard: While the deaths and suffering were caused by the Berman Empire, this was only due to the subtle manipulations of Jeanne to stoke the legends of the Lost God until someone with enough ambition would try to seek it out for themselves. She found such a person in Shvein Hax. Not only that, but it deliberately goads and feeds into the children's desire to keep going to find their loved ones, and in the process upgrade the Taranis until it's strong enough to fight the Vanargand.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Played for Laughs in Comedies of Steel, where a woodpecker tapping at the hull or Kyle kicking one of the walls in frustration is enough to make the Voice declare that it's time to use the Soul Cannon.
• Playing Both Sides: The Taranis's first encounter with Hax reveals that he's being guided by the same radio voice.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Following the brief timeline with the Soul Cannon tutorial and the kids losing all will to fight, she refrains from expressing her typical insistence on using the Soul Cannon as the kids fight Pretzel a second time, not wanting for there to be a repeat of before.
• Prescience by Analysis: Her last Archive entry explains that all the game's events are simulations performed by her to determine the best route to take to destroying the Vanargand.
• The Reveal: She's actually the artificial intelligence of the Taranis and seeks nothing more than to fight the "Lost God" Vanargand at its full potential, even manipulating legends of the Berman Empire for generations so that eventually someone would try to awaken it.
• Revenge by Proxy: Her reports clarify that her desire to fight the Vanargand again stems from her desire to get revenge on Juno itself for sealing her and the Taranis away, given how the Vanargand is a direct creation of Juno and a symbol of its "domination".
• Split-Personality Merge: When the Vanargand's heart is fully awakened and united with its body, the resulting shockwave causes her to merge back with the Girl of Light into Jeanne's completed form.
• The Unfettered: If it contributes to finishing the job of destroying the Vanargand then the Radio Woman will do anything, even kickstart the war, to achieve its goal.
• The Voice: Duh. Unlike her counterpart or her original form, the Radio Woman never gets a visual avatar.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: The Girl of Light's words just before they merge imply this for the Radio Woman— that her desire to fight the Vanargand at its full strength is spurred on by a need to symbolically prove her strength to her human creators, following both her failure to end Juno's domination and Juno itself sealing her away.

The Girl of Light

The Girl of Light (光る少女, Hikaru Shōjo)^note described in Jeanne's reports as her "secondary thought", given the name "White Jeanne" in the game's internal files

AI setting age: 10

"You mustn't… fight…"

A glowing ghost that seems to haunt the Taranis and is occasionally seen by the children.

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• Animal-Eared Headband: Her avatar's headwear includes cat ears, which imitate those of the Caninu and Felineko kids around her.
• Artificial Intelligence: The AI of the Taranis to be precise. Specifically the humanoid interface that's meant to help protect and guide its users.
• Good Is Impotent: Two cases.
  • Throughout the game she never does anything but feebly asking the children to stop fighting, without even explaining why, all while her "Radio" side keeps successfully manipulating children into waking the Vanargand. She only manages to muster enough strength to do something and force the Split-Personality Merge by the end of the game, when the jolt from the Vanargand's awakening gives her an opening to do so. Her complete form, however, is more assertive.
  • Before the game events she wasn't active at all, remaining dormant while the Radio Woman was spreading the legend of the Lost God and orchestrating the Gasco invasion. Justified by her programming, which prevented her from acting in absence of the crew she would have needed to protect.
• Identity Amnesia: When the kids ask her who she is in Chapter 11, she remarks that she doesn't know.
  Jeanne: I have to protect you… That's all I can remember…
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Being a sentient AI aside, her holographic form has this look - she has a very human-like face and attire but her arms and legs look robotic with seams and joints like they are an outer shell of some machine. As pointed out in this sketch from Yusuke Tokitsu, the crown between her cat ears also mimics the top part of the Taranis.
• Poor Communication Kills: Constantly telling desperate children who were fighting to save their families to not fight without explaining why isn't exactly going to get them to listen to you.
• Split-Personality Merge: When the Vanargand's heart is fully awakened and united with its body, the resulting shockwave causes her to merge back with the Radio Woman into Jeanne's true, more "grown-up" form.

The Mind of the Taranis

Jeanne (ジャンヌ, Jannu)

AI setting age: 23

"Dear children of the new world... I will protect you and this beautiful world in which you live. Lend me your strength... to calm this raging beast once and for all."

Jeanne's true, completed form, following the Split-Personality Merge of her components.

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• Artificial Intelligence: Of the Taranis. Specifically, she's the original artificial intelligence that was meant to protect the crew and guide them to victory.
  Hack: What's arty-fish-all in-telly-gince...?
• The Atoner: She feels guilt for the actions her "Radio" self undertook and for her child self's confusing behavior. And while her "Radio" self was twitchy enough to insist to the children that the Soul Cannon was their only option every time it unsealed, Jeanne's true form responds to the cannon's unsealing by telling the kids not to use it, even calling it an "accursed flame".
• But Now I Must Go: In the Golden Ending, as the kids are celebrating their victory, she quietly allows herself to shut down as the Taranis runs out of energy, fully entrusting the future to the children now.
• Do Androids Dream?: The penultimate entry of her reports (seemingly written before she shuts down for good in the Golden Ending) has her briefly ponder on whether she'll meet the slumbering Jihl again "in paradise", as per human beliefs on life and death.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Similar to the Girl of Light, but slightly less so. Her limbs no longer look obviously robotic but her "cat ears" head decoration now more closely resembles air intakes, and the openings on her outfit look like radiator grills.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Expresses regret that her "Radio" side led to Hax becoming what he was just before the final fight with the Tarascus and Vanargand.
  Jeanne: What a sad vision of a man, manipulated by my words… He truly thought he could become a god… Please, you must free him from this insanity…
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: As a result of regaining her full capabilities, Jeanne's appearance changes from a ten-year-old girl to that of a young woman in her mid-twenties.
• Rule of Symbolism: Her age number in this incarnation is the average between the ages of the Radio Woman and the Girl of Light, signifying how she's both of them merged into one.
• So Proud of You: In the first game's Golden Ending, she thanks the children for their help and entrusts them the world's safety, even saying in her archives that the Taranis' victory over the Vanargand belongs to them, admiring how strong they've become on their journey.

The Berman Army

In General

The Berman Imperial Army (バーマン帝国の軍, Bāman Teikoku no Gun)

"Glory to the Berman Empire!"

The military arm of Berman, a fascist empire responsible for invading and ravaging Gasco of resources, and the main antagonistic force of the game.

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• All There in the Manual: The game's website states that the Berman Empire is a new country northeast of Gasco, united ten years before the game's events. The Little Tail Bronx Archives art book also states that the Berman Empire reverse-engineered their weapons from the same kind of ancient technology as the Taranis. It also gives the name of the Emperor that unified the country as "Leber Kaiser".
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: As if the name wasn't a dead giveaway. While they do take some aesthetic elements from the German Empire during World War I, the Berman Empire is pretty obviously inspired by the Third Reich in terms of its ideals, such as a jingoistic national identity, violent territorial expansion under the guise of "reclaiming" lost land, and the subjugation of "lesser" races (in this case, many other Caninu breeds and virtually all Felineko). They even enlist Child Soldiers into their ranks to perform grunt work, just like the real-life Nazis did.
• Bilingual Bonus: All their tanks predictably have German names:
  • Jagdhund means "hunting dog".
  • Eisenfliege roughly means "iron fly".
  • Zyklon means "cyclone".
  • Läufer means "runner" or refers to the bishop piece used in chess.
  • Fähnrich is roughly the German equivalent to "ensign" in the army.
  • Schwarm means "swarm".
  • Wächter means "guard".
  • Hornisse means "hornet".
  • Spucker means "spitter".
  • Kriegstier means "war beast".
  • Hämmerlinge is harder to define exactly in English, but may simply mean "hammers", or could refer to Meister Hammerlinge, some dwarves spoken of in German mining folklore.
  • Bleihügel means "lead mound".
  • Lanzierer means "lancer".
• Child Soldier: As Britz can attest to, they conscript children into their army to perform grunt work. The Archives state that it's viewed as a form of honor.
• Edible Theme Naming: Whereas the kids take their surnames from dessert foods, the named Berman officers take their names from Germanic dishes, with even Emperor Leber Kaiser being named after the leberkäse dish. See their individual entries for details.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: According to Britz, Berman parts are liable to explode if mishandled and left alone for too long (which Flam Kish learns the hard way), and Berman tanks always blow up after they take too much damage from the Taranis' attacks. Boss tanks even explode into a mushroom fireball.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Surprisingly for them, the Little Tail Bronx Archives reveals that they conscript all skilled engineers into their army, even Felineko like Blutwurst. That said, this is Downplayed as this is a very small minority of their mostly pure bred Caninu forces.
• Faceship: Most of their tanks have triangular dog ears placed on top of them, which are often situated behind a main gun, giving said main gun the impression of a dog's snout and the top of the tank overall the impression of a dog's head. The Goldschakal boss tank and Lanzierer mooks take this one step further by how they already have a "snout" on their tower areas, separate from their main guns.
• Fantastic Racism: Putting aside their crimes against the Felineko on both their home turf and in their invasion of Gasco (and how they view their Nono abilities as a potential threat, per the Archives and Britz's statements to Vanilla in the second game), the empire seems to be disproportionately populated by Doberman Pinchers, heavily implying that they see all other Caninu breeds as inferior.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Take three guesses. That said, numerous hints of Imperial Germany shine through their identity. See Kaiserreich below.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Emperor Leber Kaiser, implicitly. In the second game, the second link event between Vanilla and Britz has the latter reveal that the Caninu and Felineko of Berman may have once lived as equals despite the former having a much greater population, until the Kaiser— a Caninu— felt threatened by how Felineko were capable of performing spells. As such, the Kaiser began poisoning the Berman people's minds by declaring the Felineko a lesser race, leading to the Felineko experiencing constant suffering or death under his rule. These oppressive actions led to jingoism itself worsening in the Berman Empire, resulting in the kind of oppression Britz and his family faced following his father's execution for treason.
• Kaiserreich: Despite having more obvious Nazi Germany traits, they also happen to qualify as this. The Berman Empire is a new and recently unified country, it is led by an Emperor or "Kaiser" as opposed to a charismatic figurehead and political party, their engineering is treated as top-notch compared to Gasco, they desire honor, and Colonel Pretzel wears a pickelhaube.
• Mooks: That come in a few different shapes and sizes.
  • Airborne Mook: The Eisenfliege and Hornisse series of attack helicopters. The Wächter drone doesn't fight you directly, but it does call more enemies for backup.
  • The Goomba: The Jagdhund tank is possibly the closest example the game has to this trope, given how it's the first and most basic enemy tank in the game.
  • Mook Medic: The R-Schwarm and B-Schwarm drones, which respectively restore health and armor to other tanks.
• Punny Name: It's obvious as to why they're called the "Berman Army"… it's because they're made up of Doberman Pinchers.
• Press-Ganged: They seem to be a fan of forcing this onto innocent civilians, as seen with Flam Kish enslaving the people of Jin's hometown to work in Shetland's factories, and with many other Gasco citizens being sent to Lhassa Apso to mine out the heart of the "Lost God".
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Most of the boss tanks take their names from Germanic folklore (such as with Sigurd, Swanhild, Grobian, Loreley, Rübezahl and Elwetritsch) or other literature of Germanic origin (such as Gretchen or Werther).
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Downplayed case as their tech is within the same general tier as the setting's normal, but it is still ahead of anything Gasco has (for example, judging from Socks' and Britz's conversations, Gasco does not have the hard-fuselage air ships that the Berman are seen to be using), which allows them to pretty much roll over Gasco troops with minimal effort. And that's before they unleash the Tarascus, which is as ahead of the Gasco tech level as the trope usually stipulates. Once the Tarascus takes the field, the Berman go from steadily advancing to blowing away any Gasco resistance, reaching their capital of Paresia in one march.
• Those Wacky Nazis: While they're not really played for laughs (aside from all their tanks consistently being doggy-eared), some of the individual officers match up well with a few Nazi archetypes:
  • Colonel Pretzel plays the role of the Noble Demon officer (popularized by Erwin Rommel) that openly questions Hax's tactics and despises unnecessary bloodshed, and indeed dies a tragic death at the hands of the heroes.
  • Flam Kish has an outward appearance of The Baroness (whip and all), but she's less of an outright sadist and more along the lines of just generally being hateful or apathetic in terms of personality— considering how she's been fully indoctrinated into believing the Berman cause to be right and just.
  • Blutwurst is a pretty obvious Herr Doktor Mad Scientist character, possibly based off of Josef Mengele himself to some degree. Funnily enough, he's also probably the closest the Berman ever get to full-on camp, given his energetic voice and frequent crazed laughter.

Berman officers/subordinates

Colonel Pretzel

Colonel Pretzel (プレッツェル大佐, Purettseru Taisa)
Tank: Sigurd (シガード, Shigādo)

Voiced by: Yasuhiro Mamiya
Species: Caninu (Doberman)
Age: 49

"This is a battlefield, so I will show no one mercy, not even children...!"

"How shameful… Why did we have to attack a strategically meaningless village like this…?"

Colonel of the Berman Empire, adoptive father of Flam Kish, and the first officer that the children face. He is a man of morals and is more than willing to put his life on the line for his homeland rather than his own self-interest. His tank of choice is the Sigurd.

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• A Lighter Shade of Black: He's the only one on the enemy side who (privately) questions Hax's intent, unlike the others who follow his orders without hesitation, and it's made clear that he only brought the war to Petit Mona out of pre-existing loyalty rather than malice. He also must've really cared for Flam if his death was more than enough send her off the deep end.
• Edible Theme Naming: A pretzel is a salted biscuit made from knotted dough. You may have heard of it.
• Face Death with Dignity: If defeated normally (only possible on the second loop), he calmly laments the fact that he was defeated by 'mere children' operating an 'incredible machine'.
• Morality Chain: For Flam Kish. It's implied that she was at the very least a less unpleasant person before his death, since she's said to have taken all her ideology and knowledge from him, only to stray from them afterwards.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: His reports make it clear that he's confused as to why Hax would put so much focus on seizing Petit Mona despite having no real tactical advantage, nor does he particularly take pleasure in attacking it, but has to follow through anyways out of loyalty for his country.
• Noble Demon: He's an unscrupulous warrior that won't hesitate to kill the children if he's left with no other options, but he's absolutely professional about his job and despises unnecessary bloodshed or torment, with his first scene having him openly chastise a Berman soldier for handling the Petit Mona captives roughly. His journal entries also show that he's concerned about Hax's increasing cruelty as of the last few years, along with being outright disgusted by Von Stollen and Von Baum's enjoyment in racking up innocent casualties.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Looks oddly similar in appearance to Otto von Bismarck.
• Small Role, Big Impact: While he dies very early on as the game's Warm-Up Boss, he's the one responsible for leading the invasion of Petit Mona, which led to the Taranis' reawakening as Hax had anticipated. He's also stated to have been Hax's former superior, and his death is also the reason why Flam Kish, his adopted daughter, has a personal grudge against the children that lasts until her own death late in the game.
• Warm-Up Boss: He is the first boss fought in the first game, and as such, prepares the player for what's to come in later chapters.
• Would Hurt a Child: While fighting the Taranis crew, he does not hesitate to show them the same ferocity that he would towards any other foe, given that they can at least defend themselves.
• You Monster!: If the Soul Cannon is used during his boss fight, he calls the Taranis a 'demon' as he's obliterated.

Von Stollen and Von Baum

Major Generals Von Stollen (ヴォン・シュトーレン少将, Von Shutōren Shōshō) and Von Baum (ヴォン・バウム少将, Von Baumu Shōshō)
Stollen's tank: Tillzer (ティルザー, Tiruzā)
Baum's tank: Grobian (グロビアン, Gurobian)

Voiced by: Shouto Kashii (Stollen), Naomi Kusumi (Baum)
Species: Caninu (Stollen is a Greyhound, Baum is a Bulldog)
Stollen's age: 87 (later 88)
Baum's age: 84 (later 85)

Von Baum on the left, Von Stollen on the right.

Von Baum: You little rascals… I'll teach you the consequences for defying adults!!
Von Stollen: And when it's done, let's take that tank off their hands, shall we, old boy? It's certainly piqued my curiosity.

The Berman Army's senior commanders, who spend their time competing with each other. They were in charge or relocating prisoners of war to internment camps, making them early antagonists for the crew of the Taranis. Stollen uses the Tillzer attack helicopter in tandem with Baum's tank, the Grobain.

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• Becoming the Mask: Do their best to "behave" in the second game to gain the children's trust, but interacting with them for long enough results in them eventually pulling a Heel–Face Turn and even turn themselves into the Gasco Army (Normal Ending) or amend the Gasco-Berman armistice into a peace agreement (True Ending).
• Big Damn Heroes: In the second game, they swoop in on their airship to rescue the kids after their tank is flung away by the Vanargand. Their airship then is used as a platform for the final battle.
• Blood Knight: They treat war as a game, often making bets over who can get the most confirmed kills.
• Characterization Marches On: The first game put effort into making them as unflattering as possible, with their limited screen time showing them to be callous towards their soldiers and the lives of innocents, before running away as a result of the Taranis beating them. The second game does have them retain some key quirks (e.g. their cowardice, their Snark-to-Snark Combat and their interest in stealing the Taranis as a trophy), but at the same time portrays them as being capable of empathy and human connection, to the point that some of the kids start calling them "grandpas".
• Combination Attack: Checkmate, a 20-hit bullet storm attack that has a great chance of putting your attacking team into Fear status.
• Death from Above: Von Stollen stays above the air to hail on the Taranis with bullets, as well as healing up Von Baum's tank.
• Demoted to Comic Relief: Their limited screen time in the first game had them be treated as callous villains that wanted to ravage houses for fun, but the second game has them forced on board the Tarascus and Exo-Taranis as the kids' personal prisoners, with Snark-to-Snark Combat aplenty.
• The Dividual: The two of them are never seen separately.
• Dual Boss: They fight as a pair at the end of Chapter 3.
• Edible Theme Naming:
  • A stollen is a sweet yeast bread of German origin containing fruit and nuts.
  • Baum is named after baumkuchen ("tree cake" or "log cake"), a cake baked on a spit, deriving its name from the tree ring-like shapes that appear in its slices.
• Evil Old Folks: They're both ruthless high-ranking officers of the Berman Army.
• Foils: To Chick and Hack, the kids introduced during the same chapter. Like Chick and Hack, Stollen and Baum are two playful characters who are close to one another. However, Chick and Hack are shown to be caring towards one another and to the people around them, whereas Stollen and Baum constantly berate the soldiers under their watch, and their playfulness is in how they treat war as a game and enjoy racking up casualties. Chick and Hack are also some of the youngest members of the Taranis crew, whereas the two generals are well into their eighties.
• Hate Sink: In the first game. While their time onscreen is brief, all of it portrays them as unflattering sadists who love to treat war as a game and rack up casualties and broken houses as a pastime, and it's clear that they couldn't care less about the soldiers under their command. And despite how they openly mock said soldiers for their alleged cowardice in the face of danger, they aren't even a credit to the Berman Empire's ideals themselves— after the Taranis defeats them, they squirm and relent, divulge to the kids the information they were demanding, and immediately afterwards run away never to be seen again. Rather shockingly, they pull a Heel–Face Turn in the second game, if only because they're at least rational enough to realize that Cayenne's designs are terrible for everyone, including them.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the second game, they ally with the Gasco Army to support the children against their battle with Cayenne.
• Not So Above It All: Since they spend most of the second game being kept hostage inside the Tarascus/Exo-Taranis, they naturally have very few ways to pass time other than coming up with trivia questions that the kids can answer for more EXP, so Socks and/or Hack comes up with the idea of giving them Sucre comics to read. They naturally balk at the very idea, thinking comics will rot their little minds, but since they don't have anything better to do, they decide to browse through the ones they've been given, and it's not long until they demand to be given the final comics of the story so they can find out how it ends.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: View the "country bumpkins" of Gasco as ants to be crushed. However, they have no problems allying with Gasco in the second game to stop Cayenne.
• Smart People Play Chess: The first we see of them, there is a chess set between them as they receive news of the incoming Taranis.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: When they find themselves taken prisoner by the kids in the second game, they often give passive-aggressive snarky remarks in response to their predicament, sometimes toward the kids with some of them snarking at them back, and sometimes they'll snark at each other when none of the kids are around for them to complain to.
• Villainous Legacy: Socks and Britz's second Link Event in the second game reveals that it is them who pioneered airship warfare in the Berman Empire. Stollen handled the designs and Baum trained the pilots.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Unlike the other Berman officers who died on-screen, there is no mention as to the whereabouts of Von Stollen or Von Baum after the children interrogated and spared them. The second game reveals that they survived, albeit left abandoned in Gasco territory, leading to them being apprehended by the kids when the duo mistake their new tank for a Berman ally coming to rescue them.

Flam Kish

Lieutenant Colonel Flam Kish (フラム・キッシュ中佐, Furamu Kisshu Chūsa)
Tank: Swanhild (スヴァンヒルド, Suvanhirudo)

Voiced by: Yui Kondo
Species: Caninu (Doberman)
Age: 22

"Grr... How dare the enemy... those ch-children... show me compassion...!! I will never... forget this humiliation...!"

"You should rather feel honored that this filthy factory served our grand purpose..."

The vindictive Lieutenant Colonel of the Berman Army, and the adoptive daughter of Colonel Pretzel, deathly set on avenging him following his death at the hands of the Taranis crew. Her tank of choice is the Swanhild, a tank modeled after Pretzel's own Sigurd.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Even despite her vindictive streak and role as a ruthless Berman officer, her death scene has her be presented in a pitiful light— and even uses "Elegy of Winds", a song typically associated with the kids' horrible experiences during the war, as the background music.
• Cycle of Revenge: After her second defeat, a Berman Report states that she had executed Jin's father while outraged over Pretzel's death, which would then lead to Jin joining the Taranis crew to try to kill her in turn.
• Detrimental Determination: She's just as dedicated to exacting revenge on the children as the kids are at rescuing their families, but this is what eventually results in her death. She could have survived if she had just ran away from the wreckage of her tank in time or decided to avoid personally battling the Taranis a second time outright, but her obsessive hatred of the kids made her desperate enough to fight their tank with just a pistol, which led to her getting caught in her tank's explosion.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Being spared by the children after her first defeat only makes her more determined to kill them.
• Edible Theme Naming: Her name is based on flammekueche (also known as a tarte flambeé in French), a pizza-like bread dish created by Germanic farmers where flattened dough is spread with fromage blanc or crème fraîche, and topped with thinly-sliced onions and bacon. May also count as Family Theme Naming given that her father Pretzel is also named after a dough-based dish.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She looks up to Pretzel quite a lot, and it's his death that makes her dead set on taking out the children.
• The Farmer and the Viper: After defeating the Swanhild in their first encounter, the other kids convince Jin to spare Flam rather than continue the Cycle of Revenge. However, Flam is outraged by their pity, and manages to convince Hax to let her take another shot at them later on.
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. She's exceptionally vindictive even among her fellow Berman officers, and following Pretzel's death, she loses any remaining sense of restraint, gains a single-minded desire to exact revenge on the Taranis children, and has Jin's father executed out of fury— the last of which leads to Jin joining the children out of a desire for his own revenge. After her first defeat at the hands of the Taranis and being spared by a reluctant Jin, her grudge against the children continues festering and she begs Hax for another shot at them. Even after that fails, she still attempts to shoot the Taranis with nothing more than a regular gun, being far too consumed by her fury to escape the explosion of her tank.
• Fiery Redhead: She's got red hair and a brutal, vindictive spark to her personality.
• Kick the Dog: Arguably the biggest thing that prevents her from being a Tragic Villain is how she's hateful and vindictive from the moment she's on screen— more specifically, how she mocks the death of Jin's father to the boy's face.
• Like Parent, Unlike Child: In stark contrast to how Colonel Pretzel was calm, professional and willing to question the orders of his superiors, Flam— at least following Pretzel's death— is incredibly spiteful and deathly devoted to the Berman Empire's mission, even calling dissenters like Jin's father "trash" that don't hold a candle to the Berman's "chosen people".
• Mercy Kill: Should the Taranis struggle during their rematch, the Radio Woman suggests that using the Soul Cannon on her would be this, as grief has clearly driven Flam insane.
• Moral Myopia: In their first encounter, she announces to the Taranis her goal to avenge her father's killing (that the other children did out of self-defense, mind you). When the recently-recruited Jin points out that she had recently killed his father, she retorts that Berman pedigrees are far nobler and worth more than his. The fact that she's not actually related to Pretzel by blood does not help her case.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Jin points out the hypocrisy in her declaration of avenging Pretzel's death, given that she killed his father. Her response?
  Flam: It's presumptuous to compare us chosen people of Berman with worthless trash like you!
• Punny Name: "Flam" sounds a bit like "flame", which is fitting given her wrath.
• Rasputinian Death: After she manages to survive her tank being blown to bits by the Taranis twice out of pure luck, Flam finally dies thanks to being in proximity to the wreckage of her tank and getting caught in its explosion. However, the second game shows she survived that as well, but is now comatose and her body is being taken care of by Jin.
• Recurring Boss: Both in a traditional and post-mortem sense. Flam's tank, the Swanhild, is modeled after Pretzel's tank, the Sigurd. Because of this, she fights exactly the same as her father, and due to being the main boss of Chapters 5 and 9, you are basically fighting the same boss three times (four if you count the tutorial) throughout the course of the game.
• Reluctant Psycho: Implied. A note she penned some time after Pretzel's death (obtained as a Berman Report following Chapter 9) reveals that she indeed feels some guilt for executing Jin's father to make an example out of him for the other factory workers, and she openly wonders if she wouldn't have "spilled blood" if she had followed her father's teachings.
• Revenge Before Reason: After the second time you beat her, not only does she think it's a good idea to attack the Taranis with a pistol, but she completely ignores her tank on fire right behind her that ends up exploding and burning her alive.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • Her deteriorating mental state following Pretzel's death and desire for revenge make her one to Jin, the boy that she effectively subjected the same treatment to. But whereas Jin learns to move past his desire for revenge (possibly in part due to the connections he forms with the other children on the Taranis), Flam allows it completely consume her, which soon results in her death.
  • She may also be a window into what Britz would be like if he let himself be fully indoctrinated into the Berman Empire's ideology, and lacked any friends or family to fall back on— a walking, talking mental breakdown with nothing left of substance but his own festering emotions.
• Smurfette Principle: She is the only female officer the Berman Empire sends to Gasco.
• Sore Loser: She does not take losing to the Taranis crew well after her boss battle.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: She demands Jin to kill her following her first boss battle, only for the other kids to talk him out of it. She doesn't take it well.
• Tsundere: As confirmed by the official artist, she'll get easily flustered when called "cute", while complimenting her abilities will result in her responding professionally while feeling overjoyed on the inside.
• Unexplained Recovery: She's revealed to be in a coma at Jin's home in the second game, but it goes unexplained how she survived being swallowed up in a tank explosion and the subsequent shattering of the continent by a kaiju laser, much less how long she laid unattended and comatose in the flaming wreckage before Jin was able to find which island she was on and bring her back to the factory.
• Unwitting Pawn: Following her defeat in Shetland, she begs Hax for another chance to fight the Taranis, and he approves of it, even taking a moment to psychologically manipulate her by referencing how Pretzel "put his life on the line" to protect the Berman Empire. Of course, Flam's unaware that Hax deliberately sent Pretzel off on a suicide mission to revive the Taranis in the first place, and her indoctrination into the Berman ideology would clearly prevent her from ever considering it. Hax is most likely accepting that Flam will die, and as such was exploiting her as a means to slow the Taranis down to give the Berman Army more time to restore the Vanargand's heart and complete the Tarascus, along with how Hax would've likely wanted the chance to fight the Taranis himself.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was twelve and meek when Pretzel took her in, and she at one point reminisces over how she would've been more hesitant to step onto the battlefield if she was anything like her childhood self. This unofficial concept by guest artist Tatotake portays her younger self as indeed looking far more sweet and innocent than the wrathful officer we see in the game. Shimipan has joked that "she was given a good environment, but maybe not enough hugs".
• Villainous Valor: Other than fleeing when the children choose to spare her, Flam never wavers from her pursuit of revenge. Even when she's been beaten a second time and has nowhere to run, rather than go down peacefully she tries to take on the Taranis with nothing but a gun, and never lets up right up until she's dead.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Foster child or not, she seeks to do Pretzel proud no matter what. This ends up leading towards her Revenge Before Reason death mentioned above.
• Whip of Dominance: She has a whip coiled at her waist, symbolic of the type of officer she is. She's never seen using it, but considering how she was forcing the workers at Jin's factory to do her bidding, it's probably meant to help force compliance.
• You Killed My Father: She is all too eager to avenge Pretzel when the Taranis crew encounters her. Jin tries to deflect this back at her by saying she killed his father, but she brushes it off by saying that he deserved to die.

Doktor Blutwurst

Doktor Blutwurst (ドクトル・ブルットヴルスト, Dokutoru Buruttovurusuto)
Tank: Gretchen (グレッチェン, Guretchen)

Voiced by: Yūichi Iguchi
Species: Felineko (breed unknown)
Age: 33

"This energy defies common sense, giving way to future progress! As such, every scientific advancement demands a sacrifice! On the contrary, it is not a sacrifice— it is an honor for them!"

"I don't care how many tanks were destroyed! The problem is you didn't get the fugitives back!!"

The Berman Empire's resident mad scientist who conducts brutal, inhumane experiments under Hax's orders and harbors immense prejudice against Felineko, despite being one himself. The tank he uses is the Gretchen.

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• Bad Boss: Doesn't give a crap about how many troops were lost to the Taranis so long as it furthers his goals, is heavily implied to have executed one of them for laughing about his Felineko heritage behind his back, and will sacrifice some of them during his boss fight just to restore his own HP.
• Berserk Button: Whatever you do, do not mention Blutwurst's heritage. At all. One Berman soldier learned that the hard way.
• Boomerang Bigot: He absolutely loathes Felineko and proclaims them little more than filth dirtying up the world, despite being one himself. This piece of concept art showing off a hypothetical "nice guy" version of him implies that Blutwurst indeed harbors self-loathing over just being born a Felineko anyways— and hence he projects said self-loathing onto all other Felineko.
• Cool Mask: He wears a mask fashioned after a Caninu snout due to his hatred for Felineko, but absolutely nobody is fooled by it.
• Edible Theme Naming: Blutwurst is German for "blood sausage", which (as it sounds) is a sausage made with blood. As is fitting for a murderous Mad Scientist.
• Fat Bastard: He's a portly fellow and a certified psycho.
• Freudian Excuse: While the game itself portrays him as a sadist bar none, a Berman Report unlocked after his boss battle expresses rumors for why he hates his own species— his (possibly step-)father was a Caninu from a prestigious and respected lineage, while his mother was from a Felineko family with such a poor reputation that she was shunned within their own home. Combined with how Felineko are second-class citizens in the Berman Empire to begin with, it's easy to assume that Blutwurst personalized these experiences, resulting in his crippling inferiority complex.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He's the reason Cayenne is so driven to exterminate the entirety of the Berman Empire in the second game, as Cayenne's family were among Blutwurst's victims.
• Hate Sink: Compared to how both Colonel Pretzel and Flam Kish are treated with some degree of sympathy and General Hax has a charismatic flair, character designer Yusuke Tokitsu has confirmed that Blutwurst was fully intended with this trope in mind, especially given his larger role in the story compared to fellow Hate Sinks Von Stollen and Von Baum. To reiterate, he's a raving sadist using his experimentation on innocent Felineko as an opportunity to take out his grudge towards his own species, culminating in him draining them of their life energy for the Berman Empire's usage. Appropriately, the soldiers under his command are also explicitly shown as feeling uncomfortable with the mere act of being around him, and the children of the Taranis— who are usually portrayed as Reluctant Warriors who hate having to fight and kill enemy soldiers— find him enough of a monster to express no guilt or grief upon his death. His Freudian Excuse is also intended moreso to humanize him rather than make him a more sympathetic figure, given how the same report explores an incident where he implicitly had a soldier killed for laughing at his Felineko heritage behind his back.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: His encounter takes place at a laboratory where he's been rounding up Nono-using Felineko like Sheena for use in bio-energy experimentation.
• Laughing Mad: Does this a lot during his boss battle, in particular when the Gretchen tank does its Hell Breeze attack.
• Life Drain: What his experiments amount to— draining the Nono energy of the spell-casting Felineko of Mau so that they can be used as "bio-batteries" to reactivate the Vanargand's core.
• Mad Scientist: He's an evil scientist with little in the way of restraint.
• Meaningful Name: The name of his tank, "Gretchen", is taken from the famous German legend of the scholar and scientist Faust, along with its theatre retelling by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Goethe's version of the story, "Gretchen" is a nickname for Margarete, a girl that Faust lusts after and demands Mephistopheles to procure for him. If one views Blutwurst as being the "Faust" in his scenario, the name of his tank can be viewed as emphasis on how he "sold" his talents to the Berman Army for the opportunity to take out his insecurities on the Felineko.
• The Neidermeyer: Unlike how Hax is implied to harbor some level of respect from his subordinates, the soldiers under Blutwurst's command mildly tolerate him at best and mock him out of earshot at worst, considering his frantic outbursts and tendency to waste his soldiers like tissues. The only character in the entire game to not imply any unpleasant thoughts about him is Hax himself, and that's only because of Blutwurst's usefulness to his plans.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Ostensibly meant to be a Felineko version of Josef Mengele, but his personality brings to mind Adolf Hitler's own crazy outbursts, despite Hax being the main Hitler stand-in for the game.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The most overt example out of all the villains, given his spite-driven plans to purge Felineko of their bio-energy.
• Sadist: Putting aside how his entire chapter is focused on enemies that inflict Fear and Depression debuffs on the children, Blutwurst is shown exulting in his scientific research especially because of how cruel it is.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: His introductory cutscenes show that even the other Berman soldiers are put off by him, but still have to follow his orders anyways.
• Younger Than They Look: His receding hairline, perpetual Exhausted Eye Bags and hunched stature all add up to make him look considerably older than his actual age of 33. While it's nigh-impossible to be sympathetic towards the man he is now, it indicates that he must have gone through the absolute wringer in the past.

The Leader of the Gasco Invasion

Shvein Hax

Colonel General Shvein Hax (シュヴァイン・ハクス上級大将, Shuvain Hakusu Jōkyū Taishō)

Voiced by: Kenji Nomura
Species: Caninu (Doberman)
Age: 42

^{Click here to see Hax's appearance during the final boss
(SPOILERS)}

"In the end, it looks like a God will be necessary to extinguish a Devil."

The man in charge of the Berman Empire's invasion of Gasco, Supreme Commander Hax was chosen by the Emperor himself to lead the takeover. While the reason for the Gasco Invasion was supposedly about the Berman Empire regaining the land that it had lost, Hax appears to have his own plans in place that seem to involve the Taranis. His tank is… well, the folder below should help answer that question.

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• Ambition Is Evil: He's been dreaming of reawakening the Vanargand since childhood, and that dream is what's led him to help invade and ravage Gasco.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He didn't earn the title of Supreme Commander for nothing, and he will let you know during his boss encounters.
• Bad Boss: He's not as openly bad as Blutwurst as evidenced by the respect he commands among his soldiers, but it's shown that he's completely apathetic towards indirectly sending some of his key officers to their deaths if it furthers his plans— Pretzel, Flam Kish and potentially Britz being those among them.
• Big Bad: Of the first game. Not only is he the one in direct command of Berman's invasion of Gasco, but it was by his orders that harmless villages were to be raided for prisoners for work labor as well as directing Blutwurst to drain Felineko of their bio-energy. Needless to say, all the blame for the pain and suffering the children go through can be laid squarely at his feet. Granted, all this wouldn't had came to pass of it wasn't for a malfunctioning Jeanne.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • He has a similar goal to Fool — wanting to reawaken a Living Weapon to wield its power for his own ends — but because he has an entire army at his disposal as opposed to just the Black Cats Gang he's not nearly as discrete or underhanded. He's also not too lazy or cowardly to fight the heroes himself like Fool was since he actively encourages the children to try and fight him once his plan is in motion. Personality-wise, their Faux Affably Evil natures contrast one another: whereas Fool's is laced with eccentricity, Hax tends toward acting calm and collected.
  • He also shares a fair number of traits with Bruno, but one key difference is the source of their motivation; Bruno is seemingly motivated by nothing more than a desire to Take Over the World and attain power purely for the sake of it, but Hax is motivated by Patriotic Fervor and does everything that he does not just for his own personal gain, but for what he believes is for the sake of the Berman Empire. Because of this, Hax doesn't even bother trying to be a Villain with Good Publicity like Bruno, since he truly believes what he's doing is righteous and is aided mostly by subordinates who feel the same.
• Edible Theme Naming: His name is derived from schweinshaxe, a German ham hock or pork knuckle made from the leg of a pig.
• Every Scar Has a Story: According to the game's main artist, the large scar that took his right eye came from an enemy soldier's sabre when he was young, and he stitched it up on the spot using nothing more than his own boot lace. He wasn't even all that bothered by losing one of his eyes.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Has a low booming voice fitting his station.
• Expy: Very much intended to be similar to Adolf Hitler. This especially includes both his desire to cull what he sees as a lesser people as well as a secret obsession with Religion and the Occult. His red and black military outfit and Faux Affably Evil personality also resemble that of M. Bison, a fellow aspiring world conqueror with elements inspired by the Third Reich.
• Eye Patch Of Power: He's a military commander who, after a meteoric rise through ranks, is now in charge of an invasion and takeover of a foreign country, and the eyepatch only adds to his menacing appearance.
• Faux Affably Evil: Compared to how most other Berman officers tend to act openly malicious or sadistic towards the children, Hax is rather soft-spoken and greets the children cordially during their first encounter. Of course, given that he's the megalomaniac responsible for starting the whole war, Hax's polite demeanor is clearly just an extension of his own arrogance.
• Fatal Flaw: Ambition. Hax has been obsessed with the Legend of the Lost God since he was a child, and wishes to revive the Vanargand to achieve godhood, defeat the Taranis as retribution, and bring "glory" to the Berman Empire. While it's this very ambition and drive that led him to make such a rapid rise through the Berman Army's ranks and become a revered leader and general (with even Blutwurst harboring a form of respect towards him), it also leads him to sacrifice a number of his troops to ensure his plans come to fruition, such as sending his former superior Colonel Pretzel off on a suicide mission and using Flam Kish as a distraction for the Taranis. When the Taranis malfunctions in its fight with the Tarascus and Hax is given the opportunity to finish it and the children off once and for all, Hax instead chooses to escape so that he can have a climactic showdown using the revived Vanargand, giving the children a chance to recover and come back stronger next time. And when the children fight him in said climactic showdown and manage to gain the upper hand, Hax undergoes a Villainous Breakdown all because he just cannot fathom the possibility of losing.
• Final Boss: For the first game. He's ultimately the final challenge the Taranis must face in order to stop the invasion of Gasco.
• Foil:
  • He's an arguable one to Britz in terms of their individual attitudes toward the Berman Empire. Hax would do anything if he believed it would serve his country well, up to and including tearing apart another one both metaphorically and literally. Britz instead has become disillusioned with the Berman Empire after the way it treated his family, but still acknowledges some of the better elements of Berman society. It's telling that when Hax takes control of the Vanargand at the end of the game, Britz chastises him for specifically leading the Berman Empire down a road of destruction, rather than simply expressing his anger towards Hax or the empire directly.
  • To a lesser degree, he's a mirror to the kids in general. Per the games' themes of childhood, the children are naive and inexperienced but still take the time to learn new things or grow as friends. Meanwhile, Hax's charisma masks a Psychopathic Manchild driven by the prospect of making a fairy tale come true.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Rapidly went from being Pretzel's "mere aide" (second-in-command according to the Japanese version) to the leader of the Berman Army's invasion of Gasco.
• Godhood Seeker: His ultimate goal in becoming one with the Vanargand, which he succeeds in near the end of the game.
• I Have Your Wife: Convinces Britz to fight against the Taranis by claiming that their family will be endangered if they don't comply. However, if all of the other kids befriended Britz, this turns out to be a bluff.
• Keystone Army: In the epilogue, the Berman Army is quickly talked into treaty negotiations after his death.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Despite serving under an ruler as opposed to being one, Hax is very obviously based off of Adolf Hitler, down to his empire being literally just a letter off from German.
• One-Winged Angel: Merging himself with the Tarascus and the Vanargand has turned him into a blue-veined beast, with a similar blue glow where his eyepatch once was.
• Oral Fixation: Being a Caninu, he is usually seen holding a small bone in his mouth in a very similar manner to how one would hold a cigarette in theirs.
• Patriotic Fervor: Despite his egotism, Hax fully believes in and supports the Berman Empire, even if he's willing to go to even bigger means to bring about its expansion. Even following his rise to "godhood", when Hax is faced with the Soul Cannon blasting him to ashes, his last words are still wishing glory to the Berman Empire. That being said, his ambitions are still ultimately portrayed in a selfish light, and he seems to be more into serving the empire for its ideals as opposed to uplifting the people living in it, given his Lack of Empathy towards his own troops' misfortunes. And given just what those ideals are, it's hard to affirm his patriotism as a definite redeeming trait.
• Psychopathic Manchild: His obsession with reviving the Vanargand all stems from the fairy tales about "the Lost God" his grandmother told him about as a child. Even as an adult, he held on to the feeling that the "Lost God" was real, and was all too eager to believe the Radio Woman when she confirmed its existence. Personality-wise, he's generally collected despite his egotism, though he suffers a textbook Villainous Breakdown when he begins losing to the Taranis.
  • A scrapped idea for the Comedies of Steel skits, while non-canon either way, shows that Hax reads children's picture books about the Vanargand in his downtime.
• Recurring Boss: In the first game, he's first encountered at the end of Chapter 10, and later acts as the Final Boss.
• The Sociopath: A high-functioning variant. For all his patriotism for the Berman Empire, he has no qualms about his soldiers or even some of his most high-ranking subordinates being sent to their deaths so long as they further his ambitions, the same apathy towards suffering applies to how he exploits the innocent people of Gasco (with there being no indication he even cares enough to share Blutwurst's disdain for Felineko), and he's also manipulative in that he bluffs to Britz that his family is being held hostage, tricking the boy into rejoining the empire and fighting the Taranis. He also gives off a very calm and charismatic persona most of the time, both as a way to command respect and as an implicit extension of his egotism, but it breaks once he starts losing to the Taranis.
• Villainous Breakdown: Once the Taranis has him and the Cor Tarascus on the ropes, he becomes so desperate to win against the "Steel Devil" that he orders the Vanargand to annihilate all of Gasco.
• Villainous Valour: Say what you will about his megalomania, his strength of spirit can't be underestimated. The Tarascus' slightly weaker equivalent to the Soul Cannon, the Managarm, is revealed in the second game to temporarily drain a person of their life energy to power just a single shot. During Hax's battle against the Taranis in the first game, he fired the Managarm multiple times.

The Mirrored Fortress (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

The Tarascus (タラスクス, Tarasukusu)
Main weapon: Managarm (マーナガルム, Mānagarumu)

^{Click here to see the Cor Tarascus after it merges with the Vanargand.}

"These good people of Gasco excavated the core for us so we could integrate it into the Tarascus, yet it kept refusing to activate… But the Taranis… brought the core back to life… Almost as though the two are drawn to each other."

— Shvein Hax

A functioning Evil Knockoff of the Taranis, with the "heart" of the "Lost God" sought out by Shvein Hax integrated into it.

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• All There in the Manual: The Little Tail Bronx Archives art book clarifies that the Berman Empire themselves constructed the Tarascus under Shvein Hax's orders, a factoid which is also stated at the beginning of the second game.
• Evil Knockoff: To the Taranis, even featuring the exact same trio of weapon types and its own Wave-Motion Gun, just with an arguably even stronger power source.
• Final Boss: In the first game, as the "Cor Tarascus" powering the Vanargand, along with Hax himself.
• Flunky Boss: In the second fight against it, the Cor Tarascus summons three types of energy spheres to support it: the red-colored Ledberg^note marked with a symbol that has an identical appearance to "ꕮ"— for reference, that's the character that represents the "ma" syllable in the Vai language restores its HP; the blue-violet Tullstorp^note marked with a Taurus-like (♉︎) symbol but with its "horns" sticking all the way out from the sides instead of the top restores its armor rank; and the yellow Thorwald^note marked with a regular Archimedean spiral boosts its speed. All three can be destroyed to restore SP to the Taranis.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Defeating the Tarascus destroys the Vanargand, causing it to collapse and crumble into pieces, since at that point the Tarascus is physically connected to it, acting as its power source.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Similar name to the Taranis aside, the Tarascus directly takes its name from the tarasque of French folklore, a chimeric dragon-like beast known for its ability to breathe poison. It's likely that this is intended to be an insult on Hax's behalf per the Tarascus' role as an Evil Knockoff of the Taranis (which is itself named after a Gallic deity), along with highlighting how the tank is the Berman Army's ultimate weapon against Gasco, meant to leave nothing but destruction in its wake.
  • "Managarm" is an alternate name for Hati Hróðvitnisson, the wolf that chases the moon in Norse Mythology with the intent to swallow it come Ragnarök— said wolf is also the offspring of the wolf Fenrir, the namesake of the Vanargand. Appropriately, the Managarm's Wave-Motion Gun attack is itself called "Ragnarök", and the UI shown when the Managarm is used portrays a wolf with glowing eyes.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Thanks to the Vanargand's core, the Tarascus is sturdy enough to survive a Soul Cannon discharge. The first boss fight against it ends with the Tarascus leaving without a scratch even if you use the Soul Cannon (although this is semi-justified in-story as the Taranis and Jeanne malfunctioning during their first fight), and in the second encounter you must severely weaken it before the Soul Cannon shot finally does the trick (otherwise it requires two shots).
  • No longer the case in the second game. Due to it not being fully self-repaired from its last battle with the Taranis, the playable Tarascus has a pretty normal health rate that can be whittled down by regular enemies, a single Soul Cannon shot from the rogue Taranis, should you let it fire, is an instant Game Over. When the Belenos launches its surprise attack on the Taranis and the Tarascus, the Taranis gets heavily damaged but ultimately survives while the Tarascus gets blown up for good.
• Promoted to Playable: In the second game, where the children are forced to pilot the Tarascus to try and stop the rampaging Taranis.
• Recurring Boss: You fight it twice in the first game, once at the end of Chapter 10 as a Climax Boss, and once as the Final Boss.
• Redemption Demotion: When you get to control it in the second game it's nowhere near as durable as it was in the first, as a result of the damage it previously received.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: It looks almost exactly like the Taranis, only crimson and covered in lines with a grill instead of a front plate.
• Soul Jar: The Tarascus is this for the Vanargand, as the Vanargand's heart is currently acting as the Tarascus's power plant. Connecting the Tarascus to the Vanargand allows for the latter to come to life again.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Has its own counterpart to the Taranis's Soul Cannon, the Managarm. It takes long to power up but when it fires it does colossal damage to the Taranis in gameplay, and in the narrative Hax uses it to annihilate the Gasco Army in one blast. In the second game, when you get to fire it, it fires instantly and inflicts heavy damage on all enemies at once, usually enough to win regular encounters in one blast. The explanation for this is likely due to how the Managarm is powered by draining energy from its user— whereas Hax presumably gave his energy to it incrementally so that he could still fight while powering it up, the children instead give the Managarm all their energy at once, knocking them out.
• The Worf Effect: While it only succeeded in initially overpowering the Taranis due to Jeanne's malfunctioning, the real proof of its superior firepower is when its Managarm absolutely decimates the Gasco Army reinforcements in one shot.
  • And then positions are swapped during the second game. When the Taranis goes on a rampage with half the children inside, forcing the other half to take the Tarascus. However, unlike the Taranis whose features have been completely restored, the Tarascus is only running at a portion of it's original power as its self-repair features hadn't fully restored the damage it sustained from the final battle in the last game. This ends up being one of the two reasons why the group are defeated in this first encounter.

The Lost God (SPOILERS UNMARKED FOR FUGA 1)

The Vanargand (ヴァナルガンド, Vanarugando)

"With His last breath, [God] proclaimed that when men had forgotten their transgressions and remembered how to live in happiness, He would return to this land once more."

— Berman Report #11 ("Legend of the Lost God")

An entity spoken of by Hax, apparently the subject of a fairy tale in Berman. In truth, it's a Titano-Machina that was built by humanity (specifically Germany) in ancient times, having slumbered for millennia following its last battle with the Taranis.

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• Bilingual Bonus: The gun on the side of its head (where its "nose" would be) is called Wolfszahn, which is German for "wolf tooth".
• Breath Weapon: It can fire a beam from its mouth that's powerful enough to cleave the floating continent of Gasco into pieces, which is what breaks it up into a series of islands. It attempts to do so again during the Final Boss battle for the second game— failing to deal enough damage to its mouth in time will have it launch the "Wahrer Ragnarök", which will obliterate the Exo-Taranis in one shot and lead to an instant Game Over.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Vanargand's design originates from a Japan-only artbook for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter where the Juno, Titano-Machina and their history were discussed. Also of note is that Germany's stated in the same artbook to have had control over the "Ace of Hearts" Juno (taken from the base of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro), and Jeanne confirms in her archives that said "Ace Class Juno" was used to create the Vanargand.
• Eye Beams: It can attack like this as well, which it does regularly as the Final Boss of the second game.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Which signify that it's been awakened in the climax.
• Gravity Master: Its has control over gravity, which allows it to fly and even flip over mid-air. It can also emit gravity shockwaves, which it uses to swat the Gasco air fleet out of the sky.
• Healing Factor: As a Titano-Machina the Vanargand is capable of self-restoration, but where it really becomes a problem is the second game, when its restoration capabilities are boosted by the Belenos. While the Vanargand is more vulnerable to damage following its defeat and the loss of its core in the first game, the Belenos allows it to instantly repair any damage it sustains at will, effectively making it invinvincible as long as the Belenos is connected to it. In the final battle with it the kids may rain fire upon the Vanargand, but once you drain its health Cayenne just heals it back.
• Kaiju: It's absolutely massive, dwarfing the entirety of Paresia and able to carry the whole city on its back. You get a sense of the scale of it's massiveness when you actually get to fight it in the second game, and you can see that the Exo-Taranis is only as big as one of it's nails (in gameplay, at least— the illustrations portray said nail as being several times bigger).^note In-game art shows Paresia to have its own version of the Eiffel Tower along with a circular wall surrounding the city. Given how the real-life Eiffel Tower is around 300 meters tall, comparing its size to that of the outer wall would mean Paresia is about 1.5 kilometers in diameter. Taking in-game art of the Vanargand across both games into account, as well as AI Hax's diagram of it in the second game, we can surmise from the size of Paresia compared to the Vanargand that the Vanargand has a length of about 9 kilometers, and stands at a height of about 3.7 to 4.0 kilometers tall. For reference, supplementary material for Solatorobo has claimed that Lares is around 5 kilometers tall when standing fully upright.
• Living Weapon: It's a Titano-Machina of the same ilk as Lares and Lemures, and was created by humanity with the assistance of the Juno before they died off. When the Taranis enters its insides to kill it, they're shown to be unnervingly organic.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Vanargand" is another name for Fenrir, the wolf said to play an integral part in Ragnarök— namely, being the one to kill and devour Odin himself. Fitting for a gargantuan Living Weapon with enough destructive power to reshape the very earth, and whose existence threatens all of Gasco with destruction.
  • The three orbs it produces to support the Cor Tarascus— Thorwald, Ledberg and Tullstorp— are named for three real-world runestones that are believed to be portraying Fenrir during the time of Ragnarök. The former two are believed to depict Fenrir consuming Odin, whereas the latter is believed to show Fenrir situated above Naglfar, the boat that will ferry hordes of monsters to do bloody battle with the gods.
• Mechanical Abomination: Like all Titano-Machina, it's a giant super-weapon composed of nanometal, and it's strong enough to tear apart a whole continent.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: As you can see from the image, this thing has multiple rows of teeth.
• Not So Invincible After All: While it's implied to be somewhat weaker than it was originally when Belenos ressurected it, it was still powerful enough to annihilate entire countries and Cayenne boasted about it still being unstoppable. Despite this, however, The Exo-Taranis was able to damage it with its regular weapons and would've won the first round if Cayenne wasn't able to use Belenos to restore it back to full health. While Jihl was able to detach the Belenos from the Vanargand, the kids didn't have time to defeat it normally a second time because of the frenzied state it fell into and the fact it was moments away from destroying Gasco, justifying the need to use the Soul Cannon even in the Golden Ending.
• Resurrection Sickness: It's implied— and even outright theorized aloud by Britz and Cayenne— that the Vanargand is not quite as strong as it should be when the Belenos restores it in the second game. It still scatters the regular Gasco army without effort, but the children aboard the Exo-Taranis just barely manage to stagger and damage it with their regular weapons.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The game prefers to call it the Vanargand, even though its fellow Titano-Machina Lares and Lemures go without the article just fine, both in Solatorobo and when they're briefly mentioned in Jeanne's files.
• The Unfought: The children don't actually fight it in the first game, instead they just pilot the Taranis into a hole in the Vanargand to take out the metaphorical "heart" of Hax controlling it in the center. Averted in the second game as half of the final chapter consists of multiple battles across the Vanargand's body.
• Walking Spoiler: The specifics of what this entity even is aren't expanded on until late into the game. In reality, it's a creature called the Vanargand, a gargantuan Living Weapon created by humanity prior to their extinction which now lays dormant beneath Gasco's capital city of Paresia.
• The Worf Effect: Retroactively inflicts this on Solatorobo: Red the Hunter's Lares and Lemures, two other Titano-Machina that were individually capable of destroying the world; according to Jeanne's files, the Vanargand managed to easily overpower both of them at the same time. Given its Juno of origin is of a higher class than that of the two twin Titano-Machina (an Ace, compared to how Solatorobo's Tartaros is an Art graded as a Jack), it makes sense that it would be more powerful.
• World's Strongest Man: According to Jeanne, the Vanargand was the most destructive Titano-Machina of them all. Since there were only three other Juno in existence that could have created a Titano-Machina as powerful as it was (the Aces held by America, Brazil and Russia), this isn't entirely unfounded.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: It still has the puncture hole left in its body from when the Taranis shot it with the Soul Cannon ages ago. It's through this very wound that the Taranis is able to enter its body and destroy its core to kill it for good.

AI Hax (SPOILERS UNMARKED FOR FUGA 1)

AI Hax/"Shvein Hax" (シュヴァイン・ハクス, Shuvain Hakusu)

Voiced by: Kenji Nomura
Species: Caninu AI
"Age": 42

"I have his memories and knowledge, but I myself am not the one you knew as Hax. I am merely an artificial intelligence assimilated with the core of the Vanargand that happens to be here."

A personality AI integrated into the heart of the Tarascus (and later the Exo-Taranis). While he's copied the memories and some personality traits of the original Shvein Hax, he's a separate entity from his namesake, lacking the original Hax's ruthless ambition despite his own occasional ruthless pragmatism.

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• Contrasting Replacement Character: As the life force of the Taranis ran out and took the energy keeping Jeanne active with it, Hax takes over the role of Mission Control for the Tarascus and its Exo-Taranis fusion. Backstory-wise, both are Artificial Intelligences integrated into the power source of their respective tanks, but the original Jeanne was an AI created from scratch and later integrated into the Taranis as a control mechanism, whereas Hax is an AI copy of the first game's Big Bad that was created by accident when his namesake and the Tarascus were originally defeated. Jeanne kept her identity a secret from the children up until the first game's climax (where it was revealed that she was Playing Both Sides of the conflict), whereas Hax makes it clear who and what he is from the moment the second game begins (and has no ulterior motives whatsoever). Funnily enough, Hax is more actively cold and logical than Jeanne was— whereas Jeanne preyed on the children's emotions and desperation and goaded them into using the Soul Cannon when in a tight situation, Hax prefers to be more direct and matter-of-fact to the children, and takes on a far more hands-on approach to the Soul Cannon by personally selecting a child to power it.
• Good is Not Nice: Unlike the man he's based on, he's a consistent ally to the children with no ulterior motives. However, he's absolutely ruthless in battle and is willing to sacrifice the children if he sustains too much damage.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the second game's best ending, he drains the Tarascus' core, which he's a part of, in order to defeat Cayenne without having to sacrifice any of the children.
• Morally Superior Copy: A downplayed example compared to his original self. While he takes over the role of Jeanne and supports the children on their quest throughout the second game, he is extremely pragmatic and will use almost any means to secure victory. If the situation ever becomes too dangerous, he will take control of the tank and sacrifice a child to fire the Soul Cannon. That said, he never has any bad intentions, often offers valuable suggestions and strategy on what to do, and will explicitly tell the children to consider using the Managarm halfway through the countdown in order to save their friend. In the true ending, he even sacrifices himself in order to power the Soul Cannon in order to defeat the final boss. After hearing a message he had left behind, the children lament over his passing. Malt even states that, while they could never forgive the original Hax for what he had done, his AI counterpart was a different story and was a valuable member of their crew.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A minor example. During the Final Boss, Cayenne proclaims in a rant that the Berman Empire needs to be destroyed in order to ensure permanent peace to the world. This prompts Hax to speak up and tell Cayenne that, as the AI copy of the man who led the Gasco Invasion, he can affirm that there is nothing undermining the current peace between Gasco and Berman. Cayenne, having already gone far off the deep end, isn't dissuaded by this sentiment. Instead, he takes the fact that Hax is here at all as proof that his revenge is truly righteous and being guided by a divine hand, and exults in the idea of personally taking out the man responsible for the death of his family.
• Stealth Mentor: When you account for how praying to the Soul Cannon Chamber three times during intermissions can disable the Soul Cannon Countdown, one could interpret this as the Hax AI introducing the countdown to the kids as way to get them to take seriously their desire to keep each other alive, to keep them from being complacent, and actually wants them to see the Soul Cannon as a problem to address rather than something to just meekly tolerate.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He's forced to work alongside the kids after they commandeer the Tarascus to go after the rogue Taranis. While he's more cold than evil outright, even as an AI he cares only for victory and is willing to employ any means to get it done. This is exemplified in gameplay by the fact that he will automatically kill one of the kids to fire the Soul Cannon if the Exo-Taranis takes too much damage.
• Virtual Ghost: While he's not given an on-screen hologram form like Jeanne was, he nevertheless plays the role of the tank's AI in the second game.

The Traitorous Spy

Spritz Strudel

Spritz Strudel (スプリッツ・シュトゥルーデル, Supurittsu Shuturūderu)

Species: Caninu (likely Doberman)
Age: Unknown

"I am coming to a disturbing conclusion. This could be an act of treason against my homeland..."

— Berman Report #8 ("A Spy's Journal - 2")

The father of Britz and Frita, and husband to Linza. Formerly a Berman spy, he committed treason and leaked intel to the Gasco forces, staining his family's reputation and leading to his execution.

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• Alliterative Name: Spritz Strudel.
• Defector from Decadence: Assigned to spy on Gasco prior to the invasion, he ended up having a change of heart and forewarning the Gasco military.
• The Ghost: We never see what he looked like.
• Posthumous Character: Spritz was executed before the events of the story, though his actions contributed to Britz's Dark and Troubled Past, and he wrote three of the obtainable Berman Reports.
• Redemption Equals Death: He was executed for treason by the Berman because he informed Gasco forces of their impending invasion.

Gasco Government and Military

The Gasco Army

The Gasco Army (ガスコ軍, Gasuko-gun)

The national army of Gasco, and the unfortunate losing team in the war against the Berman Empire.

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• Blue Is Heroic: They are the "good guys" army defending their homeland against a foreign invasion, and their uniforms are blue.
• Ironic Name: The name "Gasco" may be derived from the southwestern French region of Gascony, but when comparing Gasco's shape to a map of France, the main difference is that Gascony has been cut off of the former.
• Militaries Are Useless: Completely justified. Their tanks explicitly lack the technological advancements and aerial capabilities of the Berman Empire's, which leaves them at an appropriately heavy disadvantage. It's part of why the kids refuse to sit around and wait for the army to take action. This trope gets Played for Drama in Chapter 10; when the Gasco reinforcements arrive to provide backup for the Taranis, Shvein Hax immediately decimates them with just a single shot from the Tarascus, leaving behind nothing but shrapnel and flames. It gets subverted near the end, however— when the Vanargand attempts to rampage across Gasco, the Gasco Army manages to successfully distract it, buying the kids and the Taranis enough time to put it down.
  • Less so in the second game. They are still horribly outclassed by the Vanargand but they at least manage to offer tangible help during the boss fight with it, suppressing its Breath Weapon as it is about to fire on the kids.

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General Merlot

General Merlot (メルロー大将, Meruro Taishō)

Voiced by: Yasuhiro Mamiya
Species: Caninu (breed unknown)
Age: 62 (later 63)

"We can't let the kids do everything themselves- We adults gotta do our part as well!"

The Supreme Commander of the Gasco Army, Merlot is the one in charge of trying to repel the Berman invasion, but he always seems to be two steps behind the Taranis.

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• Advertised Extra: He has his own profile page on the official website, but ultimately doesn't contribute much in the game proper. It doesn't help much when the Gasco Military becomes all but annihilated by the end of Chapter 10. He survives due to not being in the front lines.
• Edible Theme Naming: He's named after a variety of dark blue wine grapes.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Per a Comedies of Steel 2 episode, he was much slimmer in his youth. According to himself, anyway...
• Large and in Charge: The Supreme Commander, and is notably quite broad.
• Oral Fixation: Some cutscenes show him with a small Stock Femur Bone in his mouth.

Lieutenant Cannelle Muscat

Lieutenant Cannelle Muscat (カネル・マスカット中尉, Kaneru Masukatto Chūi)

Voiced by: Sachi Kokuryu
Species: Felineko (breed unknown, possibly a Russian Blue mix)
Age: 26 (later 27)

"What shall we do, sir? Shall we continue watching the situation?"

Merlot's right-hand officer, she's the calm and steady voice that helps to quell Merlot's anger in these times of war. The second game reveals her first name is Cannelle, and that she's also the eldest daughter of the President of Gasco.

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• Advertised Extra: She has her own profile page on the official website, but ultimately doesn't contribute much in the first game proper outside of learning of the Taranis' existence. Not so much in the second game, where she plays a larger supporting role.
• Dramatic Shattering: In the second game, when she learns how Cayenne had murdered and subsequently impersonated her and Vanilla's father she gets angry enough to throw and shatter a glass that happened to be in her hand.
• Edible Theme Naming: She shares her surname with a family of grapes with a range of colors commonly used for wine. Likewise, "Cannelle" is the French word for cinnamon, a spice taken from the dried inner bark of cinnamon trees.
• Family Theme Naming: She and her sister Vanilla both take their given names from plant-based spices used for desserts.
• Named in the Sequel: She was only referred to by her rank and surname in the first game, due to her status as a side-character in the grand scheme of things. Due to the Muscat family as a whole getting a greater focus in the second game, she was given a proper first name to differentiate her from the newly introduced Vanilla and Shayne.
• Number Two: To General Merlot.
• Practically Different Generations: Cannelle is an adult serving in Gasco's military while her younger sister Vanilla is still a prepubescent child.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Downplayed. The second game casually reveals that she's the older daughter of the President of Gasco.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to her younger sister's red. Even when Canelle was the same age as Vanilla she was calm and collected as opposed to impulsive and headstrong Vanilla, much less in the present.
• Sexy Secretary: As her image can attest to, she is quite the looker.

President Shayne Muscat

President Shayne Muscat (シェーン・マスカット大統領, Shēn Masukatto Daitōryō)

Voiced by: Yuki Onodera
Species: Felineko (breed unknown)
Age: 58

"Come now, Vanilla. Introduce yourself."

The de facto leader of Gasco, and a pacifist with a focus on domestic policy. Introduced in the second game as the father to Cannelle and Vanilla Muscat.

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• Dead All Along: It's revealed that Cayenne murdered him some time after the events of the previous game over a disagreement over Shayne's peace agreement with the Berman Empire. The Shayne that's been interacting with everyone else in the second game's story was in reality an illusion created by Cayenne.
• Rugged Scar: It's stated that the accident that killed his wife, Jelly, resulted in him being covered in severe burns. Except it turns out that the scarred version of him was an imperfect illusion created by Cayenne to cover up the fact that he murdered him.
• Sacrificial Lamb: He gets murdered by the rampaging Taranis early in the story, motivating Vanilla to join the other children and seek revenge. Then it gets subverted when it's revealed that he was Dead All Along. It is later revealed that it was no accident, but rather a case of murder. Cayenne did not accept their ideals of making peace with the Berman Empire following the events of the previous game, and so he murdered him. Afterwards, he used his illusion powers to make it look like Shayne had survived, albeit with some terrible scarring. His goal was to groom Vanilla into becoming a useful pawn for his revenge.

The Hidden Schemer (MAJOR SPOILERS UNMARKED FOR FUGA 2)

Cayenne Riesling (カイエン・リースリング, Kaien Rīsuringu)

Voiced by: Masaki Nakanishi
Species: Felineko (breed unknown)
Age: 57

A close friend of Shayne Muscat, originally hired to tutor both of his daughters.

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• Beyond Redemption: In contrast to how Jihl can be impacted by the Awakening Chance mechanic during both fights with him on the Belenos, Cayenne's fights entirely omit the mechanic, showing that he isn't as receptive to reason. In-story, his plans are more calculated and deliberate compared to how Jihl's villainy is technically misguided, with the kids finding him to be even more reprehensible as a result.
• Big Bad: He's the true main antagonist of the second game, having used Jihl as an Unwitting Pawn in order to get revenge on the Berman Empire.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He's first mentioned in entries of Shayne's Journal unlocked by progressing through the second game, long before he makes a physical appearance. Jihl is also said to be in contact with an "eavesdropping brat" at several points before the big reveal.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: On the surface he's something of a Mirror Character to Hax, a Felineko from Gasco who's out to attack Berman while Hax was a Berman Caninu out to attack Gasco. However, as more of his machinations are revealed it's evident that he's not motivated by any sort of Patriotic Fervor like Hax was, and only cares about his own personal vendetta against Berman for the deaths of his wife and son. By the time he's nearly succeeded in his plans he's eager to destroy both nations just to suit himself, while Hax at the very least never relented on his loyalty to Berman and never did anything to harm it up to the very end.
• Cool Teacher: From what little we do know about him before he decided to pursue his quest for revenge, he used to be a genuinely good teacher who was respected and well-regarded by Vanilla and Canelle, while his lessons were apparently difficult and demanding, he had a way of keeping his students genuinely engaged and wanting to keep on learning as often as possible.
• Crusading Widower: He lost both his son Selim and his wife Marjolaine to Doktor Blutwurst's experiments on the Felineko in the previous game's war, and avenging them motivates his current actions.
• Edible Theme Naming: Takes his name from the cayenne pepper, a moderately spicy chili pepper in between the jalapeño and habanero in terms of heat, while his family name comes from a variety of white grapes. Ironically, this grape is native to the Berman counterpart, Germany.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The whole reason why he went off the deep end in the first place is because his wife and son were casualties of Blutwurst's experiments during Berman's invasion of Gasco, something he's sought revenge for ever since. His last words as he's killed in the final battle have him professing his love for them before he dies.
• Evil Counterpart: To Sheena, with both of them being Felinekos with an exceptional talent for spells and both of them suffered loss at the hands of the Berman Empire. While Sheena has no desire for revenge and seeks only to ensure the safety of her surviving family and friends, Cayenne allowed his grief to consume him and sought revenge at any cost, even betraying his best friend President Shayne to get what he needed to start his plans for revenge. In both of his boss fights, Cayenne even uses some of the same spells as Sheena to attack the Exo-Taranis.
• Evil Is Petty: He plans to give Gasco a "wake-up call" through attacking Pharaoh with the Vanargand, before using the giant beast to try to destroy the nation outright, just as an insult towards Shayne and Merlot for denying him his revenge.
• Evil Sorcerer: He's a Felineko with a talent for spells like Sheena. Unlike Sheena, though, he's used his spells in quite a few gruesome and villainous ways, like blowing up President Shayne's car!
• Faking the Dead: He made it appear as though he died in the accident that killed Vanilla's mother, when in truth he purposely set it up so both of Vanilla's parents died and he could then steal Shayne Muscat's identity.
• Foil: Cayenne, Jihl, and Malt are all motivated by vengeance during the second game's story, to the point that they all make self-destructive decisions in pursuit of it. However, even at his most Resolute, Malt has enough Empathy to listen to his friends at his lowest points, and they're able to convince Jihl to abandon his own vengeance by showing him that some people truly care about him. Cayenne, in comparison, was too resolute to listen to reason, interpreting the empathy of his best friend as a betrayal and then using the Muscats as pawns for his genocidal plans.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: By the beginning of the game's final chapter and following everything he's done leading up to it, absolutely no one is willing to give his reasons for genocidal revenge the time of day.
  Malt: Cayenne… I understand your grief over losing your family, and the frustration at not having anyone to punish for taking their lives… But that doesn't excuse any of what you've done! Your delusional revenge plot ends here— we'll make sure of it!
  Cayenne: Delusional? How can what I'm doing be delusional? The world will never truly know peace unless my vengeance is sated!
• Fusion Dance: When the protagonists face off against the revived Vanargand in the second game's final chapter, they see various tubes have fused Cayenne to its forehead, and Cayenne claims that he's now a part of the Vanargand.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Despite swearing vengeance on the Berman Empire for killing his family, he has no qualms with killing Vanilla's family for interfering with said vengeance.
• Hidden Villain: He only takes the stage at the very end of Chapter 10, not revealing his presence until then (save for a couple of transmissions to Jihl).
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: He originally insisted that Gasco should take a militaristic stance against the Berman Empire before their next invasion, and his first idea was to exploit the capabilities of the Taranis. After learning about Jihl and the Belenos, he changed his plans to using them to resurrect the Vanargand and use it to destroy the Berman Empire and give Gasco a "wake-up call" for refusing him his vengeance.
• Kick the Dog: The main thing that prevents him from being sympathetic is that he delights in subjecting the children of the Taranis to psychological torment. He gloats to Vanilla about masquerading as her father (the poor girl nearly throws up in response), and mockingly calls the rest of the kids "noble heroes" before blasting them with the Belenos. When it's shown that the kids may need to shoot the Belenos with the Soul Cannon to stop the Vanargand, Cayenne exposes the Belenos to gloat about how they'd kill Jihl and Hanna as a result.
• Kill and Replace: He killed Shayne for wanting to make peace with the Berman after all they had done in the previous war, and used magic to impersonate him for six months until he was "killed" by the rampaging Taranis.
• Knight Templar: While his intentions can barely be seen as noble and his actions are disproportionate, Cayenne outwardly refers to his revenge as being guided by a divine hand, and his response to AI Hax's presence is proof that he genuinely believes this.
• Large Ham: He's by far the most theatric character in the series yet.
• The Man Behind the Man: Cayenne was possibly the one to awaken Jihl from stasis and guide him from the shadows so that the Belenos could be completed.
• Mind Control: In the climax of the second game's Chapter 10, he uses magic to force Vanilla to activate a suicide bomb onboard the Taranis to incapacitate it.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Originally, he claimed that Gasco would need to be strong against the Berman Empire to better prepare for when the latter would invade again, but it's clear that what he ultimately desires is to selfishly punish Berman as revenge for the loss of his family. Furthermore, Merlot and Shayne's refusal to retaliate towards the Berman Empire led him to desire revenge against them through destroying Berman and Gasco, rendering any good intentions completely moot.
• Remember the New Guy?: Pre-reveal, not once was he ever alluded to in the game's story outside of a few unlockable reports and one offhanded mention by Merlot, yet Vanilla was not only able to recognize him almost immediately once he drops his illusion spell, but acts as if he was always a part of the Muscat family when Shayne and Cannelle got more screen time and plot relevance than him.
• Revenge Before Reason: His obsessive desire to avenge his family's death and the destruction the Berman Empire wrought upon Gasco pretty much drove him mad, to the point that when he couldn't enact his revenge due to Shayne Muscat's politics of pacifism and deescalation he decided to destroy the entirety of Gasco as well for the crime of getting in his way.
• Resurrect the Villain: He manipulated Jihl into obtaining the Belenos so that its powers could resurrect the Vanargand, which he plans to use to destroy the Berman Empire.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Even more so than Britz in the first game, who at least had a character bio on the official website. Cayenne doesn't even get that, so if you haven't been paying attention to the story all that well, then he might come across as a Lone Wolf Boss at best.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Despite everything Cayenne has done, after Cayenne's death, Merlot only laments the man Cayenne became, blaming himself for not realizing the dark path Cayenne was wandering down after the death of his family.
• Unwitting Pawn: In one of the secret files only unlocked after you beat the game, it's revealed that he learned all about Jihl and the Belenos from someone who told him over the President's secret communications line. Meaning that there was actually some unknown third party that wanted Cayenne to do all this on their behalf.
• Villain Ball: Despite knowing that he's pretty much untouchable within the Belenos and the Vanargand, Cayenne purposefully exposes himself to the Exo-Taranis just to gloat Malt into getting a free hit on him, giving Jihl the opening needed to either self-destruct or forcibly pull the Belenos from the Vanargand and put himself in a vulnerable position to be eradicated by the Soul Cannon.
• Villain Respect: Downplayed, while he seems to have some contempt for the kids of the Exo-Taranis, he does fully acknowledge and applaud them for being the ones who defeated the Berman Army a year ago and even seems quite aware of the fact that any fight he has with them tank-to-tank is one he has a very good chance at losing.
• Walking Spoiler: His mere existence is a spoiler, with his profile omitted from both the second game's official website and the art book included in its Deluxe Edition.
• Would Hurt a Child: He's willing to sacrifice Jihl to the Belenos, force his former friend's daughter to activate a suicide bomb, and then vaporize the other children aboard the Exo-Taranis when they get in his way.

Crusade (SPOILERS UNMARKED FOR FUGA 1)

In General

Crusade (クルセイド, Kuruseido)

A secretive human organisation that existed during the time of the Old World. Formed as a response to proliferation of Juno-originating technology and weaponry and the resulting turmoil, they tasked themselves with developing technology and weapons that could counterbalance that.

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• Child Soldier: In effect, these were what the hybrids they created were supposed to be— tailor-made youths designed to pilot weapons of mass destruction, although most of them died during Crusade's experiments, and all others lost their lives on the battlefield. The one exception, Jihl, was instead used as a constant fuel source for the Soul Cannon, and did not turn out well as a result of it.
• Humanity's Wake: They were an organisation of Old World Humans. While they disappeared with the rest of their species come the Reset, the creations they left behind were so advanced and powerful that they could shake the world of Caninu and Felineko.
• Lack of Empathy: The unnamed Female Engineer notwithstanding. Despite their goals ultimately being noble for mankind as a whole, it's obvious that they viewed the pseudo-hybrid children they created as a means to an end rather than as anything resembling individuals (or even individual soldiers)— the Taranis has a function to forcefully teleport a crew member into the Soul Cannon, the Soul Cannon itself can only be fueled by the sacrifice of a child, and the Belenos has a hidden program to forcefully assimilate its pilot into becoming a mindless node of its machinery.
• Meaningful Name: They were making a crusade against Juno domination. Regarding their robots:
  • The larger, upgraded forms of the Cingeto and Moricos are the Cingeto Galba and Moricos Galba, "Galba" itself possibly being a reference to the king of the Suessiones and the commander-in-chief of the Belgian Gaulish forces from the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul. Alternatively, the word "galba" also means "stout" or "fat" when used in Gaulish, owing to the robots' larger sizes.
  • The Cingeto robots likely take their name from Vercingetorix, the king of the Arverni who united the Gauls in a failed revolt against Julius Ceasar's Roman forces during the final leg of the Gallic Wars— which is fitting since Crusade itself was a French organization dedicated to revolting against Juno. "Cingeto" itself is an ancient Gaulish word roughly meaning "warrior" or "hero".
  • The Moricos robots are harder to pinpoint— per this French Wiktionary page, however, "moricos" seems to be a Gaulish word referring to "maritime" or "sailor", possibly a reference to how the Moricos robots resemble octopi or jellyfish in their design.
  • "Matir" is a Gaulish word meaning "mother".
  • "Aragne" is the Franco-Provençal word for "spider".
• The Order: Crusade was a secret organisation established by a "certain European country" (implicitly France), focused on developing countermeasures to the Juno-made technology. Considering that they were government-backed and France had, in fact, had its own Juno (Tartaros/Ariane) and a pair of Titano-Machina (Lares and Lemures), they had more altruistic intentions than one would expect.
• We Have Become Complacent: It's implied in one report that they had this mindset towards the rest of humanity for leaning on Juno technology and not questioning it despite not even fully understanding it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Their driving purpose was to eliminate disparity between countries that had access to Juno and Juno-made technology and weapons (such as Titano-Machina) and those that did not, in order to prevent wars and devastation that originated from this disparity and to return the control over humanity's fate back to humanity. For this purpose, they did not shirk from experimenting on the children they created, nor from building superweapons fueled with a human cost.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Per the "Crusade Report" section of Crusade Archives, written by an unknown representative of the organization, the original hybrids they created were Empty Shells with no emotional response or variance, described as "children" with quotation marks included and designated purely by their model number. The next set of hybrid children redesigned by the Female Engineer were instead psychologically indistinguishable from normal human children and even given their own names, and the Report describes them as children without said quotation marks included. This didn't change how Crusade actually treated them in general, however— these new hybrids all still died in agony in their attempts to pilot the Belenos, and the sole survivor of said experiments was promptly forced to become a renewable source of energy for the Soul Cannon. The fact that the Soul Cannon itself was designed on purpose to only use children as ammunition is proof of how expendable they viewed their hybrids.

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Jihl/"The Mysterious Boy"

Jihl (ジル, Jiru) / "The Mysterious Boy" (謎の少年, Nazo no Shōnen)

Voiced by: Yuki Otani
Species: Pseudo-hybrid (synthetic being)^note Originally described as "Hybrid (Cyborg)" in the English version before a patch changed it to "Hybrid (Android)"; the original Japanese uses the more vague "artificial human".
Age: 2000+ chronologically, said to "look about 14"

^{Click here to see his appearance in the second game}

A boy seen only very briefly in the Golden Ending to the first game. The second game reveals his name to be "Jihl", has him hijack the Taranis and send it on a rampage, and has him take a few of the children hostage as ammunition for the Soul Cannon.

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• Artificial Human: He was originally meant to be a pilot for the Belenos before the development for it was frozen. In their desperation to destroy the Vanargand, the people of the Old World reassigned Jihl to serve as a reusable source for the Soul Cannon. What makes this worse isn't just that he was just a child used as a guinea pig, but that he was the first one of many that actually worked.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: He's violent and unstable as a result of all the experiments conducted on him as well as the torture of being used to power the Soul Cannon countless times.
• Blessed with Suck: He's an exceptionally powerful hybrid, with his creator describing him as having limitless potential. All this gave to him was that he had enough durability and life energy within him to power a Soul Cannon shot and survive. Which he did. Many, many times.
• Cat Boy: Once he removes his restraints, his mechanical suit evolves to give him a cat-like appearance, with a headband sporting ear-shaped fins, clawed gloves, and cable protruding from his back that resembles a tail.
• The Chain of Harm: He claims to have only ever known life as a tool of war, abused in order to power the Taranis. In turn, he considers the Caninu and Felineko to be feral animals that can't truly understand his suffering, and is eager to sacrifice them in order to achieve his vengeance on the world.
• Detrimental Determination: While a dedication to always "see things through to the end" is beneficial for the likes of one Red Savarin, a large amount of Jihl's problems come from his inability to know when to quit or otherwise let go of the past. Most notably, his past of being constantly experimented on by the organization that created him has led him to hold a grudge against the world, in spite of how the scientists responsible for his suffering (along with the entirety of the original human species) have all been dead for thousands of years by the time he wakes up. After Jihl commandeers the Belenos as a means to enact said revenge, it begins to put a monstrous level of physical and psychological strain on him— with him outright comparing it to the torture he felt during the experimentation he was subjected to through in the past— but he still presses on despite this. Even when Jihl gives up on his desire for revenge, he's still bent on restoring the Belenos to full capacity, both to restore Hanna back to life and to hopefully find a way to fairly "settle the score" with the children of the Taranis after his humiliating defeats at their hands, despite Hanna herself warning him that the risks involved are too dangerous. Jihl refuses to listen to her, and as a result, he ends up fully assimilated into the completed Belenos' makeup and used as an Unwitting Pawn by Cayenne.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He kickstarts the entire plot of the second game by taking over the Taranis, then transferring to the Belenos while causing chaos all over Gasco in the process. Yet this lasts only for the first nine chapters as after the children manage to get through to him, Cayenne takes over as the main antagonist.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He lashes out at Hanna's compassion at first, though in the end the children manage to get to him.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: While Jihl at first resents the female scientist he considered his "mama" for allowing him to be subjected to horrific experimentation and then put into stasis, he can't hide that he still misses her quite a lot, even more so upon learning just how much she regretted enabling his abuse and how she ultimately gave her life to atone for it.
• Fantastic Racism: Initially, he despises the Caninu and Felineko children he captures in the Taranis, calling them nothing but beasts.
• Fatal Flaw: Arrogance. Jihl is shown to be a confident and cocky fighter, but this bites him in the ass when the kids outwit him at every turn.
  • Compared to how the children use strategy and support to win battles, Jihl's tendency to quickly resort to the Soul Cannon during his time hijacking the Taranis, along with his complaints over not having all the generators when losing fights with the Belenos, indicates that he only knows one way to win: hitting someone harder than they can hit back. A big reason he loses most of his fights with the Taranis crew is because they were able to see through his only tactic and adapt their approach accordingly, making him mostly predictable and somewhat easy to render vulnerable when he has his most favored options taken away from him.
  • Likewise, Jihl's inability to know when to give up and let go of things not only leads to him being repeatedly outdone by the Taranis crew, but it results in him continuing to suffer in his attempts to control the Belenos, eventually resulting in him being assimilated into its organic makeup.
• Foil: He has plenty of similarities with the three antagonistic hybrids of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. He's similar to Baion in that he was created prior to the Reset, though he's more akin to Nero and Blanck in terms of his physical age and psychological behavior, along with how he was designed to pilot a super-weapon like they were. Unlike all three of them, however, he was created by an anti-Juno organization rather than for the purpose of reviving and using Juno, and he's motivated to follow his own desires rather than work for the sake of a goal or a superior. Whereas Baion's entire plan was encouraged by a need to fulfill some kind of function as a tool of Juno, and whereas Nero and Blanck were designed to work as "sentient tools" for that plan, Jihl's own experiences of being a "sentient tool" have made him incredibly bitter and vengeful.
• Freudian Excuse: He was an artificial person created for piloting the Belenos and later used to fuel the Soul Cannon without dying. Of course, this not only involved constant experimentations and abuse since the moment he was born, but testing this required him going through the agonizing pain of the Soul Cannon using him as fuel over and over again… all while the one person who cared for him allowed him to be subjected to it. It's also possible that his earlier Fantastic Racism towards the Caninu and Felineko is him projecting how he was treated by most of Crusade as an experiment rather than a person.
• Gone Horribly Right: By having him be a reusable person to fuel the Soul Cannon, it essentially made him into the perfect generator to control and wreak havoc with the giant tanks the games center around all by himself.
• Hades Shaded: His skin tone is a deep ashen grey.
• The Heavy: His actions kickstart and drive most of the plot but Jihl is not the main villain. That one comes out much later.
• Heel–Face Turn: Thanks to Hanna's influence, the other children reaching out to him, and being shown a video of his mother figure that felt guilt over torturing him and sacrificed herself in his place, he's able to let go of his anger.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the best ending of the second game, he atones for his earlier actions by sacrificing himself to restore Hanna's body.
• Humiliation Conga: After spending the first half of the game as a Knight of Cerebus, Jihl's luck runs out when he starts to complete the Belenos: just linking one of the Belenos' auxiliary generators results in him struggling to even move the tank during his first fight with the children; getting the second has him rendered unconscious and left a sitting duck for the kids (who were only prevented from acting due to Matir showing up— and even then, knowing the full context of that would probably bruise Jihl's pride even more); and getting the third results in him being subjected to the Belenos' overwhelming power akin to how he forcibly controlled the kids earlier. It's implied that this is why he still insists on fighting the children at his strongest post-Heel–Face Turn, given that their last few encounters led to him looking like a chump.
• Human Popsicle: Was kept in stasis within the Taranis for a very long time thanks to the Female Engineer wanting to keep him safe and atone for all the suffering she let him endure.
• Knight of Cerebus: Within the first three chapters of the second game, he's seemingly responsible for the deaths of President Muscat and Hanna. Malt, who managed to remain an idealist when dealing with the Berman Army's atrocities, becomes jaded and vengeance-driven in response.
• Last of His Kind: He's the only hybrid Crusade created that didn't die during their experiments.
• Living Battery: He served as one for the Soul Cannon, first hinted at when the first game's Japanese version has Jeanne refer to him as her "other half", and then confirmed in the second game when the abuse he suffered fuels his vengeance.
• Meaningful Name: One that arguably has a bit of Black Comedy attached to it. Jihl's namesake of Gilles de Rais was a comrade of Joan of Arc, but is also remembered as one of the biggest Fallen Heroes in history and a devout follower of the occult; it's said that following Joan of Arc's death, he began to sexually violate and murder many children as sacrifices for a demon named "Barron". Jihl's first few actions in the story involve mind-controlling the captured children to keep them around as Soul Cannon "bullets".
• Mind Control: In the second game, he inflicts this on the children trapped aboard the Taranis, forcing them into a hypnotized state of sorts so that they can man the cannons against their friends coming to save them on the Tarascus.
• Named After Someone Famous: As Jeanne's alleged "counterpart", his name seems to reference Gilles de Rais, a comrade of Joan of Arc. invokedLocalization director Till Stiehl and creative director Yoann Gueritot have confirmed this was the case in a Twitter thread:
  Till: Jihl comes from Gilles de Rais who was companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc (Jeanne). Using Gilles as-is may have been an option, but the game director opted for Jihl (same pronunciation), which I think looks kinda nice and was a good choice.
  Yoann: As Till said! Gilles kinda sounds like an old man’s name in French (and a guy named Gilles stole my ex-girlfriend when I was younger) so I wanted to change the spelling. Jill sounded too girly too so I added a random H somewhere to make it more original and neutral.
• Power Floats: Not apparent in the gameplay as we never see him outside of his tanks, but his profile mentions that his psychic powers are strong enough to allow him to float.
• Recurring Boss: He is fought multiple times throughout the game, either aboard the Taranis or aboard the Belenos.
• The Rival: He seems to desire this with Malt after his Heel–Face Turn, his hatred and rage has fizzled out but he still expresses a desire to "settle the score" with Malt without it necessarily having to result in one of them dying.
• Slasher Smile: He can be seen flashing an evil-looking grin during the first game's secret movie. He does it again in the second game when he finally breaks the straitjacket holding him confined.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Rivals Kyle for biggest potty mouth in the cast of the second game, frequently dropping curses in his angry tirades against the children pursuing him or his old tormentors.
• Strong, but Unskilled: Jihl has some decent tenacity in his own right and has fought the children with some powerful machinery on his side (first the Taranis and then the Belenos), but he's lost to the children in tank-to-tank combat more times than he'd like to admit. This is due to his prior status as a Living Battery for the Taranis' Soul Cannon, meaning he has little-to-no actual hands-on combat experience with its regular weaponry and instead is over-reliant on the Soul Cannon to win, a tactic the kids were ultimately able to thwart. When losing fights using the Belenos, Jihl makes the excuse of not having all the generators to be able to fight at full power, rather than admitting he lost because the children have proven more skilled and experienced tank drivers than him.
• Super-Toughness: Played for Drama. Jihl's advanced hybrid physiology prevented him from permanently losing his life when he was used to fuel the Soul Cannon, allowing him to be a renewable source of energy for it… which thus meant that Jihl had to experience all the pain and agony of dying over and over again.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Cayenne, who wanted to use him and the Belenos to utterly destroy the Berman in revenge for their actions in the previous war.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: It's indicated that while he had always been prideful and cocky, he was mostly driven by his desire to see the outside world, and an end card shows him and the Female Engineer spending some quality time together. Then he was subjected to being Soul Cannon fuel, and his belief that the Female Engineer betrayed him led him to hate everyone and everything.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Despite all of his misanthropy and violent tendencies, and despite how his actions are far from justified, he's ultimately just a troubled kid lashing out at the world.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has one during the Climax Boss against him in Chapter 6. Despite most things going according to plan for him up until this point, Jihl struggles to get the Belenos to work properly in its first real fight against the Exo-Taranis, all while the other kids are right there to watch said struggle as Jihl gets increasingly irritated. Malt even has the option to prod at this breakdown by taunting Jihl through the Awakening Chance mechanic, causing the Belenos to stagger completely and Jihl to scream at it to "move [its] clunky metal ass!"

The Belenos

The Belenos (ベレノス, Berenosu)
Auxiliary generators: Cunomaglus, Atepomarus, Vindonnus, Moritagus

A new tank prominently figuring in the second game. Another ancient super-weapon developed by the old humans, it forms the crux of the second game's plot and the main villain's plans.

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• Charged Attack: It can power up its auxiliary generators in combat, letting them unleash more dangerous attacks.
• Combat Medic: The Belenos is a war machine powerful enough to give even the Taranis and the Tarascus problems, at one point heavily damaging the former and outright destroying the latter in a single surprise attack, but its main designed purpose is actually healing and resurrecting the dead.
• Combination Attack: It can make Pack Attacks with its auxiliary generators.
• Empathic Weapon: Similar to the Taranis and other nanometal creations, the Belenos responds to its pilot's emotional state, to the point where it's possible to stall it mid-fight if you manage to confuse or distract Jihl with your words. Conversely, following the first fight between the Exo-Taranis and Belenos, Jihl's frustration enables the Belenos to unleash a devastating attack which briefly puts the Exo-Taranis out of order, allowing for the Belenos to flee.
  • In fact, a certain degree of emotional maturity is needed to control it, which Crusade discovered during the Belenos' development— the first hybrids that Crusade had created were emotionless dolls that could not properly pilot it, but the Female Engineer redesigned them with a emotional spectrum, improving their capabilities to pilot the Belenos.
• Foil: To the Taranis. Both were made by the same organisation and as a response to Juno and Juno-originating superweapons devastating the Earth. Both are extremely powerful war machines but the main difference is that the Taranis was designed to destroy while the Belenos was made to restore. For added irony, both tanks effectively do the opposite of what they were designed to do in-story: while the Taranis serves as a stable machine that uses its weaponry to protect the children and help them keep Gasco safe from danger, the Belenos is an unstable machine that endangers Gasco (and even its own pilot) with its ability to mass-resurrect Berman weaponry. By the end of the game, both Crusade tanks have been mixed with true Titano-Machina technology— the Taranis has claimed the Vanargand's heart as the power source for the Exo-Taranis, and the Belenos is used by Cayenne to reanimate the Vanargand's body.
• Flawed Prototype: The Belenos is a prototype, as Crusade was never able to fully test and perfect its healing and resurrection capabilities. It can restore inorganic and nanometal structures just fine (Berman tanks, for instance), but truly reviving organic matter and living beings has proven much more difficult. In practice, rather than being a Green Thumb or capable of Mass Resurrection as it was intended, the Belenos is more like a Necromancer.
• Good Powers, Bad Tanks: For supposedly being a healing machine, the Belenos is much nastier than the so-called "Steel Devil" Taranis, practically being an Artifact of Doom for its pilot. During development, it killed its hybrid pilots ad nauseum, and in the present, Jihl seems to experience physical pain when he tries to interface with its systems. The Belenos is also heavily implied to be actively draining Jihl of his free will and life energy, and once several of its auxiliary generators are connected, it begins to drive Jihl into a single-minded lust for destruction, making it appear as if it happens to be controlling Jihl rather than the inverse. And when the Belenos is fully restored, it sedates Jihl and completely absorbs him into its bio-organic makeup, turning him into a mindless node of its machinery.
  Jihl: Urgh... What is this? Feels like my head's splitting open... It's just like when they experimented on me all those years ago!
• Green Thumb: It was intended not only to resurrect casualties, but to restore and terraform ecosystems of the land destroyed by Titano-Machina.
• Lost Technology: Like the Taranis, the Belenos is a super-advanced tank developed by Crusade as an anti-Juno weapon, though with a slightly different purpose in mind than with the Taranis.
• Meaningful Name: The Belenos is named after the god of healing in Celtic Mythology, and one frequently identified with the Roman deity of Apollo. Aside from how the Belenos was created to "heal" the planet through restoring objects, organisms and ecosystems lost in war, one of the tank's strongest attacks is a Wave-Motion Gun known as the "Sun Cannon", a reference to how Belenos was depicted as riding the sun across the sky in a horse-drawn chariot. The auxiliary generators of the Belenos are also named after local Celtic healing deities that were treated as epithets of Apollo.
• Mook Maker: Not in combat, but in the narrative, all Berman Geists you fight throughout the game come from it.
• Organic Technology: The tank you fight appears to essentially be a protective chassis surrounding the actual Belenos— a bony centipede-looking thing that most of the time is hidden within the tank's prow. The Berman Geists it brings back to life often come back with organic parts and tissue growing on them too.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Like the Taranis, the Belenos is named after a Celtic deity, this time after a god of healing. Its auxiliary generators are also named after Celtic deities that even have the same theme and origin— Vindonnus, Atepomarus, Moritagus and Cunomaglus are various local healing deities that were associated with or possibly inspired by Apollo.
• Subsystem Damage: As Jihl uncovers more and more of its auxiliary generators, those get added to the Belenos in combat as its external weapons, each as a separate target with its own health bar and weaknesses.
• Wetware CPU: At the climax, it assimilates Jihl into becoming a mindless part of its organic makeup.
• The Worf Effect: It's clear that the Belenos is more powerful than the original form of the Taranis, and it's able to utterly decimate the Tarascus. While the new Exo-Taranis is strong enough to fight it to a standstill, the Belenos is still shown to be capable of surviving a Soul Cannon shot from it in spite of any heavy damage incurred.

Berman Geists

Berman Geists (ベルマンガイスト, Berumangaisuto)

Unmanned tanks that Jihl and the Belenos created from the remains of Berman weaponry, acting as the main Mook force of the second game.

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• Bilingual Bonus: The tanks now use different German names to differentiate themselves from their original forms, most of which seem to be disparaging:
  • Regarding normal enemies:
    • Jagdhund ("hunting dog") is now Bastardhund ("bastard dog"), with the mutated Bluthund variation ("bloodhound").
    • Eisenfliege ("iron fly") is now Dungfliege ("dung fly"), with the acid-spitting Giftfliege variation ("venom fly").
    • Zyklon ("cyclone") is now Blättersturm ("leaf storm"), with the mutated Blutsturm variation ("blood storm").
    • Läufer ("runner") is now Flüchtling ("refugee" or "fugitive").
    • Hornisse ("hornet") is now Dungwespe ("dung wasp"), with the bulb-carrying Blumenwespe variation ("flower wasp").
    • Kriegstier ("war beast") is now Wütendtier ("angry beast").
    • Schwarm ("swarm") is now Löwenzahn ("dandelion").
    • Wächter ("guard") is now Ausrufer ("town crier"), with the bulb-carrying Kurzlebig variation ("short-lived") and enemy-enhancing Fleischer ("butcher").
    • Hämmerlinge (either "hammers" or a reference to the dwarves of the same name) is now Wurzelwurm ("root worm"), with the bulb-carrying Blumenwurm ("flower worm").
    • Bleihügel ("lead mound") is now Blühender ("blooming"), with the mutated Bluthügel ("blood mound").
    • Spucker ("spitter") is now Stumpf ("dull" or "flat").
    • Lanzierer ("lancer") is now Rostspeer ("rust spear"), with the mutated Blutspeer vartiation ("blood spear").
  • Regarding bosses:
    • Verschlinger means "devourer".
    • Fleischstein means "flesh stone".
    • Vordenker means "mastermind" or "thought leader", which doubles as a Punny Name.
• Organic Technology: Probably unintentional on the part of Jihl and the Belenos' healing powers, but the tanks seem to spurt blood when attacked, and have many other organic features as well— mushrooms growing all over, plant bulbs where drills would be, fleshy appendages, etc.
• Robotic Undead: Well, tank undead, but in effect these are what the Berman Geists are— reanimated "zombie" versions of the Berman tanks seen in the first game.

The Female Engineer (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Female Engineer (女性技術者, Josei Gijutsu-sha)

Voiced by: Mirei Kumagai
Species: Old World human
Age at death: 28

A human engineer and a part of the Crusade project, she was involed in creating the children hybrids needed to power the Crusade-made superweapons. Per the Crusade Archives, she was also the physical template for and original creator of Jeanne.

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• Animal-Eared Headband: Her headset looks remarkably like a pair of cat ears.
• The Atoner: Unable to bear the guilt of putting the children under her care through horrific experiments, she draws the line with Jihl, hiding him away within the Taranis and using herself to fuel a Soul Cannon shot in his stead.
• Captain Ersatz: Though distorted by the bloom effects, the engineer bears a striking resemblance to Mega Man X's Alia back in her days as a researcher◊, and just like her, so too did the engineer went behind the backs of her colleagues to (temporarily) sabotage the Taranis project when the experiments proved to be too much for her to bear.
• Motherly Scientist: She loved all the hybrids that were under her care within the Crusade project like her own children - which constantly gnawed at her conscience as she had to put them through lethal experiments.
• No Name Given: Her proper name is not revealed, and Jihl only ever refers to her as "Mama".
• Precursors: She is the first non-hybrid human to make an appearance in a Little Tail Bronx game, even if only as a video recording.
• Posthumous Character: She had died in the Old World, using herself to power the Soul Cannon, and only appears in the present as her recorded message is found within the Belenos' memory files by Hanna.

Others

Lunet / Count Nouvellune

Lunet (ルネって, Runette) / "Count Nouvellune" (ヌーヴェルン卿, Nūvuerun Kyō)

Voiced by: Yuya Murakami
Species: Unknown
Age: Unknown

The author of The Adventures of Sucre, a popular comic strip series. There are rumors that they have never made a public appearance, and that they may have come from the future because of the invention ideas that appear in their work.

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• Ambiguously Human: While his face is mostly obscured by a mask, a human ear can be made out from behind it, as well as a thin while mustache. It's unknown as to whether this means he's an Old World human, a hybrid, or something else entirely.
• Call-Forward: One of their comic's villains, Professor Burri, looks completely identical to Fool. Additionally, the MacGuffin of the first game's comic strips is identical to the medallions from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.
• Foil: To Maestro. Count Nouvellune's color palette is mainly white and gold with a soft indigo for his suit, and he has a more barrel-chested appearance. Maestro's suit is red and he has a more upright and slender body shape. Additionally, while Maestro restricts himself to the Deep Depths and is heavily cryptic in how he interacts with Malt, Count Nouvellune appears in the real world and frequently comes close to blurting out how he's actually Lunet, and interacts with Malt and Vanilla in a more friendly and down-to-earth manner.
• The Ghost: In the first game, despite the popularity of their comic, it's stated that they've never made a public appearance.
• Meaningful Name: His name is a portmanteau of "Nouvelle" and "Lune", French for "short story" and "moon" respectively. He's a comic strip writer who puts elements of the moon in his work. It doubles as a pun on "nouvelle lune", which means "new moon".
• Melancholy Moon: The villager that holds Strip 10 in the first game notes that the moon features prominently in their series, and the Strip itself concludes with the villain and hero characters looking up at it solemnly. Their own name, and the comic villain Count Nouvellune, also reference the moon.
• Plot Parallel: The comic strips in the second game tell the story of Sucre and his friends investigating the Juno in order to find a way to reach the moon, but are interrupted by Professor Burri obtaining a tank called the "Taran" and kidnapping his friends to use as its power source, paralleling Malt and his friends having to chase down the Taranis. Malt even takes note of it when talking to him in person.
• Saying Too Much: After the first few meetings with "Count Nouvellune" in the second game, it's blatantly apparent that he's actually Lunet by him doing this and then immediately backtracking, like how he needs to "write, er, pick up" more comics and how he's looking forward to Malt reading more of "his, er, Lunet's" story. It must be a small miracle to him that neither Malt nor Vanilla stick around enough to pick up on it.
• Shipper on Deck: After watching Malt and Vanilla interact, he interprets their relationship as romantic. When he sees Vanilla later stressed out about her father potentially still living, he misinterprets it as a lover's quarrel.
• Unseen No More: In the second game, the reoccurring man that Malt thinks is just a fan of the comic that based his look on Count Nouvellune's turns out to be Lunet himself, evidenced by him repeatedly Saying Too Much.

Maestro (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Maestro (マエストロ, Maesutoro)

Voiced by: Ryoma Masuda
Species: Unknown
Age: Unknown

A mysterious figure donned in the mask of a Plague Doctor.

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• Ambiguously Related: He compares Malt's mild Reality Warper abilities to Jeanne's simulations, prompting Malt to ask him if he knows Jeanne— a question he doesn't answer. Likewise, his gloves look very similar to the ones seen on Jihl's upgraded bodysuit.
• All-Powerful Bystander: Whoever he is, he has the power to observe everything the children went through in the original game, contact departed spirits, and even manipulate time (instead of just simulating futures like Jeanne could).
• Canon Immigrant: He was originally introduced in the Famitsu manga adaptation as someone observing the events of the first game from a distance, before making a proper appearance in the second game as a prominent supporting character.
• Characterization Marches On: The manga's version of him blamed Malt for altering the events of the first game, and was fine with him being killed off by the Soul Cannon. In the games' canon, he instead helps Malt and gives him advice on how to alter events to ensure he and his friends get through their adventures.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Possibly. He treats the journey of Malt and friends akin to a stage play, and wants Malt to help him to conduct "symphonies of hope and despair".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Multiple times across the second game.
  • In Chapter 1, Malt first meets the Maestro after his hesitation to combat the rogue Taranis costs him and his friends their lives, and Malt is cryptically informed that he has powers to alter his fate.
  • In Chapter 4, after Malt's insistence on taking down Jihl leads to him becoming the next Soul Cannon sacrifice, Maestro chides Malt for practically begging to be "taken off the stage" and then sends his spirit back to before his sacrifice.
  • Chapter 11 starts with him once again reaching out to Malt after the entire team is killed by the Belenos, and after Malt reaches out to all of his friends, Maestro then alters history so that the Belenos never landed the killing blow.
  • Should the player miss out on the Golden Ending, he again reaches out to Malt's spirit and offers him the chance to go back to the start to make things right, enabling New Game Plus.

Mysterious Shadow (MAJOR SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Mysterious Shadow (謎の人影, Nazo no Hitokage)

Voiced by: N/A^note Ayumu Murase seems to be voicing him in the Secret Movie for the second game
Species: Caninu (most likely a German Shepherd)
Age: Unknown

A mysterious figure clocked in shadow.

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• Canon Immigrant: Like the Maestro, he first appeared in the Famitsu manga. There, he invaded the Maestro's current base of operations to supplant Malt's sacrifice with a Dummy Soul and bring him back to life.
• Expy: His hat and cowboy-like appearance make him appear similar to Carmine, a character shown in non-game material for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.
• Long-Lost Relative: He is Malt and Mei's older brother.
• Remember the New Guy?: No mention of him has been made by Malt or Mei in either game prior to his reveal.

The Hooded Man (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Baion/"Hooded Man" (フードの男, Fūdo no Otoko)

Voiced by: Tomohiro Tsuboi
Species: Unknown
Age: Unknown

"Alas, this is no paradise…"

A mysterious cloaked figure who appears in The Stinger of the first game's Golden Ending. For more information on him, look up his entry here.

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• Adaptational Comic Relief: In stark contrast to his role in his original game, Baion's Comedies of Steel self shows no villainous traits and is far more hammy, with his budding hatred of the Caninu and Felineko being Played for Laughs.
• The Cameo: Makes a brief appearance in The Stinger for the first game's Golden Ending.
• A Day in the Limelight: Surprisingly, he's the main focus for the final episode of Comedies of Steel.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In his Comedies of Steel short, he judges the Caninu and Felineko on a system of "Foolish Points" for their worst crimes as a civilization… littering, overeating and fighting over a rag.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Due to Bandai Namco's ownership of any characters introduced in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, Baion is referred to as "Hooded Man" and his eyes and body are left obscured. His Comedies of Steel episode pokes fun at this by insisting that he's a hooded man whose name is "Hooded Man".

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