open/close all folders
Main Characters
Rouge Redstar/Metal Rouge
Rouge Redstar/Metal Rouge
Voiced by: Yume Miyamoto (Japanese), Monica Flatley (English)
The main character, a robot girl who is tasked with destroying the Immortal Nine. In her armored form, she is known as "Metal Rouge".
- Alliterative Name: Rouge Redstar.
- Big Brother Worship: She hangs onto her human "older brother" Gene's every word, and lives for his approval.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Rouge can project a green Laser Blade from each wrist.
- Experienced Protagonist: She's been hunting the Immortal Nine for a while and has already killed two at the start of the series.
- Henshin Hero: She can transform into a red armored form.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: Goes after the Immortal Nine, fighting for her own freedoms in the process.
- Living MacGuffin: Her body houses an ID that Alter wants so they can start their Nean revolution.
- Manchild: While Neans are normally Born as an Adult, Dr. Junghardt noted Rouge's mental and emotional development was significantly slower than the norm. At ten chronological years old, Rouge is as socially awkward, impressionable, naive, occasionally bratty, and hard pressed to grasp philosophical concepts as most human ten year olds would be.
- Red Is Heroic: Her armor is red. She even has "red" in her name twice.
- Robot Girl: She's a Nean.
- Trademark Favorite Food: She doesn't physically need to eat anything, but she likes chocolate for the taste.
- Unskilled, but Strong: She has Naomi do most of the strategizing for her when they take on Viola, and in every other fight she tends to win by just attacking her target until it dies. Most of her opponents have a clever gimmick at their disposal to even the odds but lack Rouge's sheer power by comparison, though Rouge will typically hit on some strategic idea by herself if she fights for long enough, as seen with her fight with Giallon in episode 6. Dr. Junghardt noted during her early development that her physical prowess far outstripped her mental development.
Naomi Orthmann
Naomi Orthmann
Voiced by: Tomoyo Kurosawa (Japanese), Cassie Ewulu (English)
An agent of Aletheia, and Rouge's handler.
- Bespectacled Cutie: She wears glasses.
- Big Eater: Always seen eating huge meals.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: Her glasses are actually a control interface for her bird drones.
- Mission Control: She comes up with the plans for dealing with the Immortal Nine.
- Older Than They Look: While her public identity is 21, Naomi was actually made by the Zenoah shortly after First Contact 40 years ago.
- Robotic Reveal: She casually drops her status as the first Nean created onto Rouge when meeting up with the Zenoah. Naturally, Rouge is both shocked and confused by this revelation.
- Significant White Hair, Dark Skin: Dark skin, white hair, Rouge's handler, Ochrana's Divine Facilitator, and the first Nean to have been created.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Frequently shown eating tortilla chips, even after it's revealed she's a Nean.
The Immortal Nine
In General
- Kill All Humans: They actively fight for "Nean Freedom" by killing any humans, or Human-affiliated Neans like Rouge.
- Super Prototype: They, along with Rouge, are all "Proto-Neans", early types able to deform into their combat modes and free from the restrictions of the Asimov Code.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: They're all hostile to the government and claim to be fighting for Nean freedom.
Hell Giallon
Joker / "Hell Giallon"
A member of the Immortal Nine with the ability to transform into other people.- Beneath Notice: While Giallon is a capable combatant, by far his most dangerous quality is how effective his ability to appear as someone else is. Unless people are aware of his presence in an area already, he can move wherever he wants without any threat of being tracked, and gum up whatever is going on around him at his leisure. Rather tellingly, Rouge's big fight with Giallon only comes about after Giallon makes an effort to alert security onboard the ship the cast is cruising on that he's there through his wanton acts of cruelty, ostensibly because he decided at that point he wanted a fight with Rouge.
- Beneath Suspicion: Giallon loves making use of this trope when he doesn't want to be found. He's masqueraded as Rouge to draw out Viola and get media attention on Rouge's efforts, he's taken on a clever guise to draw people away from Phantom Verde, and he even pretended to be a dog at one point. Unfortunately for Giallon, Naomi did see through that last one since she was wise to his tricks at that point.
- False Flag Operation: In the first episode, he attacks Viola while impersonating Rouge to make the former paranoid about the latter.
- Irony: He's beaten by Rouge in their second fight after criticizing her for her simplistic Attack! Attack! Attack! approach to combat when Rouge notices Giallon's own critical dependency on hitting people from behind with his chakrams and exploits it by anticipating his Finishing Move and directing it back at him, taking out his legs and sending him crashing to earth.
- Logical Weakness: He can take any form he wants and perfectly mimic a person's voice, but his weight remains consistent across every form - 82.2 kilos. This means that when he isn't actively murdering people, he'll take a form that conforms to his weight to better pass off as who he tries to appear to be. Naomi exploits this by getting him alone with a group of people with his exact weight, before Rouge then simply decks everyone in the room. (Not planned by Naomi but ultimately still able to flush Giallon out.) Since Giallon is a powerful robot, anyone who can take a punch from Rouge must be him, which does manage to expose him even after he tries to get clever and become a dog.
- Practically Joker: A complete murder-happy psychopath, who even uses a Joker as a calling card.
- Rings of Death: His main weapon is a set of energy chakrams which he controls telekinetically.
- Squishy Wizard: Much of Giallon's potential comes from his tricky approach to combat and assassinating people. When forced into a traditional fight, he's almost purely a Long-Range Fighter who uses his chakrams to confuse and confound his foes. Once he runs out of ways to hide and keep his distance, however, he goes down fairly easily; he's one of a small number of neans shown to actually react to being shot by a normal gun, even if he can recover from the attack quickly.
- Uncertain Doom: Some characters react as if Giallon's re-entry actually killed him following his conflict with Rouge, though there's otherwise nothing to suggest he actually died, especially considering he's a machine. It turns out that he survived, but just barely.
- Villainous Harlequin: His combat form has poofy shoulders and a pair of downward-curving horns that make him look like he's wearing a jester's motley, and in the first episode he uses a Joker as a literal calling card. He's also an unhinged maniac who kills people and manipulates former allies seemingly for shiggles.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The last he was seen in the final episode was him fighting enemies while barely surviving through his enemies. It is unknown what happens to him afterwards.
- You Killed My Father: It’s revealed that he’s the one who killed Rouge’s father.
Purgatory Viola
Viola Keane / Sarah Fitzgerald / "Purgatory Viola"
Voiced by: Yu Shimamura (Japanese), Brandi Price (English)
A member of the Immortal Nine who turned her back on the group to reinvent herself as Sarah Fitzgerald, a popular singer. She is fought and defeated by Rouge in the first episode.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Her high-frequency arm blades can slice through massive slabs of concrete like a knife through butter.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: She has high-frequency blades attached to her forearms.
- The Chanteuse: Her Sarah Fitzgerald identity is a well-known lounge singer.
- Detachment Combat: She can detach her forearms from her body and use them to attack from a distance. They remain connected to her arms by tendrils of purple energy while she's doing this.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Viola's reaction to Rouge destroying one of her arms is to call Rouge a "cheeky bitch" without even a hint of pain and deploy her Shoulder Cannons.
- Motive Rant: While fighting Rouge, Viola rants that she just wanted to be able to sing and that Neans shouldn't be treated any differently from humans.
- Shoulder Cannon: Her Vertical Mecha Fins conceal powerful flamethrowers.
- Starter Villain: She's the first member of the Immortal Nine we see Rouge defeat, though the third member overall.
Phantom Verde
Afdal Bashar / "Phantom Verde"
Voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese), Jonah Scott (English)
A doctor who works with Neans. Secretly also Giallon's subordinate.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Most of his success in battle with Rouge came from Rouge feeling regret when hit with his neurotoxins. He was otherwise not a physical match for her and went down easily. However, following the fight with Afdal, Rouge collapses and is rendered unconscious, leading to her capture, likely as a result of the lingering effects of drugs and neurotoxins in her system.
- Despair Event Horizon: Constant exposure to the callousness humans treat other Neans with in his line of work has utterly broken Afdal, leaving him a hard drinking misanthrope who views everyone, himself included, as a slave of causality.
- The Fatalist: Afdal is a very driven nihilist. He actively goes around killing people because he's been ordered to do so, but also because he believes no one is free and only the only 'freedom' in the world comes from the sweet release of death.
- Poisonous Person: His main asset in combat is a neurotoxin that he can emit that's even capable of affecting Neans, otherwise his fighting skills are rather lacking in comparison to the other Alters.
Flash Silvia
Jill / "Flash Silvia"
A photographer that Rouge and Naomi meet on Mars. She is the de facto leader of the Immortal Nine and their plans for a Nean revolution.
- Blow You Away: She can spin at high speeds to generate her own tornado, both as a weapon and an escape move.
- Camera Fiend: She's introduced with an optical camera, an uncommon sight for the very Post-Cyberpunk setting of the story.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She suffers through this when Cyan, whose body was possessed by Roy’s consciousness, severs both of her arms and grabs her by the head to brutally rip out and crush Jill’s ID, killing her.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Has this after she and the others in the final episode learn that Roy had deceived them by manipulating the Immortal Nine’s memories and actions to help with his master plan to make Neans turn against humanity, which prompts Silvia to try and kill Roy in anger.
- With Us or Against Us: Tries getting Rouge to join the rebellion, despite knowing full well Rouge has already killed members of the Nine, as a means to try and get her ID. She simply opts to kill Rouge for it instead upon realizing that the latter refuses to cooperate with the Immortal Nine.
Jet Black Noir
Eden Varock / "Jet Black Noir"
A scavenger Rouge meets on Mars inspecting the wreckage of an old battle site full of (mostly) dead Cylinder Heads. Though one of the Immortal Nine, he doesn't go along with their plans.
- Big Damn Heroes: He makes his first transformed appearance in episode 5, helping Rouge and Naomi escape from the traveling carnival and their stock of Usurper war machines.
- Department of Redundancy Department: His title basically boils down to "black black".
- The Gunslinger: He's a mostly ranged fighter, with a pair of foldable Arm Cannons and side skirts that each convert into 3-barreled cannons that can fire in any direction.
Double-Headed Aerkos
Aes / Alice / "Double-Headed Aerkos"
Twins that Rouge and Naomi meet on a cruise ship heading to Earth; in reality, they are two minds inhabiting the same body.
- An Ice Person: They can generate ice to use as a weapon.
- Half-Identical Twins: Functionally. In their public identity, they ostensibly are this outright: whichever twin is in charge of their body at the moment says the other is back home when asked or mistaken for the other.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: They're not fans of Alter's methods, and for their part just try to stay off everyone's radars.
- Say My Name: Alice yells Silvia’s name after the latter was killed by a possessed Cyan controlled by Roy’s consciousness.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Aes is a bookish people person who doesn't like confrontation, while Alice is prickly and judgmental, especially of people she thinks her brother thinks too highly of. Since she's the more forceful of the two, Alice is generally in charge of their Aerkos form.
- Sky Surfing: They can fly by surfing on a chunk of their own ice.
- Two Siblings In One: Though they were always like this, instead of originally being separate then one died. Noid compares it to Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Grauphon
Grauphon
Another member of the Immortal Nine. He has a history with Gene.
- Gravity Master: He can manipulate gravity to stop bullets, G-LOC someone to put them out of commission, or even hover around.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: His primary weapon is a set of energy arms that he can generate out of his shoulder ports.
