--TRIGUN CHARACTERS--

Profiles are based on the TV series, except for "Creator Comments," which are Yasuhiro Nightow's comments on the comics as printed in the Puff magazine interview.

NAME: Vash the Stampede
A.K.A. "Ericks," "Tongari"
OCCUPATION: Self-professed "Love Hunter"
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Mole by left eye, artificial left arm, too many scars to count. Often seen with spiked hair, red coat, and sunglasses.
WEAPONS: The silver upside-down six-shooter, machine gun (concealed), Angel Arms (concealed).
PHILOSOPHY: "Love and Peace!"
COMMENTS: Pacifist. Inordinately fond of donuts. (Also note that he's not so girl-crazy in the manga.)
CREATOR COMMENTS: HEIGHT: "It isn't set. About 180 centimeters, more or less, I guess."
NAME ORIGINS: "'Stampede' is his nickname or common name. It means 'cattle running wild.'"
HAIR COLOR CHANGE: "There is a reason. But I can't tell you yet."
WEIGHT OF COAT: "It isn't set. For all that there's lots of stuff attached, it might be lighter than you think."
EYESIGHT: "I think it's quite good. And his motion perception is good, too. That, plus his sense of judgement in emergency situations, and lightning-quick reflexes have kept him alive. He doesn't have super powers or anything."
LIVING EXPENSES: "He works as a bodyguard and stuff like that to earn his keep. He's steady--he doesn't seem like the type to waste money."
DRESSING TIME: "I haven't decided that! (cries) He puts that on every day, so he must be pretty fast, right?"

 

NAME: Meryl Stryfe
A.K.A. "Derringer Meryl"
OCCUPATION: Claims Investigator, Bernardelli Insurance
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Extremely feminine speech, dangly earrings.
WEAPONS: American Derringer (x 50)
PHILOSOPHY:  
COMMENTS:  
CREATOR COMMENTS: SALARY: "Even if her actual salary isn't much, I think she's getting a lot of hazard compensation."
FAMILY: "She's from a nuclear family."
WEAPONS: "She has 50 Derringers under her cape. Even though they're lightweight guns, when you add them up, it's really heavy. I thought, 'I blew it!'"

 

NAME: Milly Thompson
A.K.A. "Stungun Milly"
OCCUPATION: Claims Investigator, Bernardelli Insurance
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Pretty tall for a woman. By turns, unusually perceptive/not all there.
WEAPONS: Stungun
PHILOSOPHY:  
COMMENTS: The youngest of ten children. Writes home regularly.
CREATOR COMMENTS: FAMILY: "She's the youngest of seven children." (manga version)
WEAPON: "It looks pretty heavy. She must be pretty strong to walk around carrying that."

 

NAME: Nicholas D. Wolfwood
A.K.A. --
OCCUPATION: Itinerant Minister and Gunman
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Speaks Kansai dialect.
WEAPONS: Cross Punisher No. 1 (Grader handgun x ?), Cross Punisher No. 2 (machine gun/rocket launcher)
PHILOSOPHY: Shoot first, ask questions later, and may God go with you.
COMMENTS: Financially supports the orphanage where he was raised.
CREATOR COMMENTS: HEIGHT: "It isn't set. I think he's a little taller than Vash--by a centimeter or two."
NAME ORIGINS: "It's a pun. He's modeled on Tortoise Matsumoto, so it's taken from 'Ulfuls.' His middle initial D. stands for 'Dokonokuminomonjawaresumakinishiteshizumetarokakora.' (laughs)"
DAILY CIGARETTE CONSUMPTION: "I don't know! (cries) Well, it must be a lot. And paper cigarettes are probably expensive, so he probably smokes ..."
COSTUME (DRESSING LIGHT): "His outfit is simple because if you add lots of stuff, it's hard to draw. He has enough character with just the cross."
KANSAI DIALECT: "It's an English-speaking world, so he's not actually speaking Kansai dialect. Think of it as indicating some accent."
NAME OF GUN: "'Punisher.' Is he punishing the enemy or himself?"
WEIGHT OF GUN: "I think it must be at least a hundred-something kilograms. It's amazing that he can carry it. He must have an incredible sense of balance to be able to swing it around like that."
SIZE OF GUN: "About 170 centimeters or so going the long way."
TIME (PROCEDURE) OF PUTTING AWAY GUN: "It isn't set. He picks up the cloth, wraps the cross in it, and then carefully fastens it in place with the straps, right? Even if he acts cool, it takes a lot of work."

 

NAME: Legato Bluesummers
A.K.A. --
OCCUPATION: Psychopath
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Blue hair, gold eyes. Wears unusual white coat with skull and spikes.
WEAPONS: Mind control.
PHILOSOPHY: "Eternal suffering to Vash the Stampede."
COMMENTS: Knives' right-hand man. Vash's left-hand man. Often appears with a snack.
CREATOR COMMENTS: HEIGHT: "Undecided. He might be a little shorter than Vash."
NAME ORIGINS: "He just seemed like a Legato."
DRESSING TIME: "I'm telling you, I don't know! (cries) It's just the coat, so it should be faster than you're expecting."
FAMILY: "He seems like he'd have a younger sister. I don't know if she's alive or dead, though."
FAVORITE FOOD: "I liked that they gave him a sweet tooth in the animated version, but in the comics, he's just a glutton. (laughs) He seems as though he'd like [spaghetti with] meat sauce and curry rice and hamburgers--childish, easy-to-understand stuff like that."

 

NAME: Millions Knives
A.K.A. --
OCCUPATION: Environmental Activist
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Ostensibly identical to Vash, except for lighter hair color, absence of mole, and evil gleam in eyes.
WEAPONS: The black upside-down six-shooter, Angel Arm (concealed).
PHILOSOPHY: "One must kill the spider in order to save the butterfly."
COMMENTS: Has extremely low threshold for pain.
CREATOR COMMENTS: "There are slight differences, but he's exactly like Vash."
"I think he just picked up Legato on a whim."

 

NAME: Rem Saverem
A.K.A. --
OCCUPATION: Crew member, "Project Seeds" colonization ship.
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS:
Long black hair.
WEAPONS: Are you kidding?
PHILOSOPHY: "Your ticket to the future is always blank." "No one has the right to take another's life." "When you turn around again, the future is there waiting for you." et cetera et cetera.
COMMENTS: Likes red flowers, geraniums in particular.
CREATOR COMMENTS: PERSONAL HISTORY: "She's someone who joined the ship's crew driven to desperation after her boyfriend died."
NATIONALITY: "I think she's Asian, but it isn't set."

The Gung-Ho-Guns

The Gung-Ho-Guns are a group of twelve "superpowered killing freaks" who do Knives' bidding.

Spoilers are in white on white; click and drag to read (and be careful with your mouse if you don't want to read).

Name: TV Version: Comics Version:
Legato Bluesummers
(TV ep. 12)
The leader of the GHGs, with tremendous powers of mind control. He drives Vash to a mental breakdown by forcing Vash to kill him. At the Fifth Moon incident, he is squished by Knives as punishment, and spends all of Trigun Maximum in a sort of full-body cast/coffin thingy.
Monev the Gale
(TV ep. 12)
Big and strong, with big guns mounted on his body. Spent 20 years training just to kill Vash the Stampede. Vash lets him live, but later finds his corpse nailed to a water tank by E.G. Mine.
Dominique the Cyclops
(TV ep. 15)
The only female member of the GHGs. She can seemingly move with lightning speed, but actually, she hypnotizes her opponents with the mutant red eye beneath her eyepatch. Vash lets her run away, but she is caught by Midvalley and her corpse is later found strung up beside Monev's. In the manga, her eye is grotesquely reptilian instead of merely having a red pupil. She choses to throw herself off Jeneora Rock rather than face Legato with the shame of defeat.
E.G. Mine
(TV ep. 16)
A lean, mean guy in a ball of spikes which he can send shooting in every direction. Abruptly killed by Rai-Dei the Blade.
Rai-Dei the Blade
(TV ep. 16)
An anachronistic Japanese swordsman with a fringed cowboy vest over his samurai clothes. Although he starts fighting only with his sword, in a pinch, he reveals that it conceals a gun. Survives the Fifth Moon incident only to be shot by Wolfwood as he makes his escape. In the comics, Wolfwood abruptly shoots Rai-Dei dead in the middle of his fight with Vash, provoking the manga's equivalent to the ending of anime episode 22.
Leonof the Puppetmaster
(TV eps. 19-21)
A little old(?) man who can make and control great numbers of extremely realistic puppets. His puppets can come apart and recombine into different forms, and are also useful for spying and delivering messages. Eventually Wolfwood tracks him down and shoots him. In the manga, we learn that he spent his childhood on the ship and was a friend of Vash's. His most precious posession is a coffin containing the corpse of the woman he loved, and when he loses that during his fight with Vash, he choses to fall to his death.
Grey the Ninelives
(TV ep. 21)
An unstoppable giant killing machine--actually a robot. Wolfwood fails to completely disable it, and it ends up destroying the ship's Plant. An unstoppable giant killing machine--actually a monstrous Muppet operated from the inside by nine dwarves. Two of them survive the fight with Wolfwood and are taken prisoner on the ship.
Hopperd the Gantlet
(TV ep. 21)
A human bullet. That's all. The manga gives him personality and motivation with a tragic backstory: he intends to kill Vash to avenge the woman he loved, who was killed in the city of July. He overexerts his body, and dies a peaceful death, condemning Vash to live in the hell that is their world.
Zazie the Beast
(TV ep. 22)
A young boy who can control giant sandworms. Vash sees him crying for his mother in his sleep, and suspects that he can be turned to the side of good, but Wolfwood settles the matter by abruptly shooting Zazie dead. In the comics, Zazie seems to be not a human being, but a collective consciousness of insects inhabiting a manufactured body. The little-boy-with-the-bandana body is destroyed by Hopperd, but "the Beast" reappears in what appears to be the body of an adolescent girl.
Chapel the Evergreen
(TV ep. 23)
Wolfwood's master, a tall, bald preacher with creepy surgically-attached eyepieces and a big cross that splits into two machine guns. Knives obliterates him from existence for his failure. The red-eyed preacher was created for the anime. In the manga, Wolfwood himself is the GHG known as Chapel. Unlike the rest of the GHGs, he has direct orders to guard Vash and bring him to Knives.
Caine the Longshot
(TV ep. 23)
A very tall, thin, silent sniper wrapped in leather. Has the ability to sit in the desert for weeks at a time waiting for his target, hidden by what looks like a thermoptic-camouflage cloak. He kills himself when his attempt on Vash fails. An original character created for the TV series by mechanical designer Noriyuki Jinguji. Does not appear in the comics.
Midvalley the Hornfreak
(TV ep. 24)
A saxophone player whose sound waves can destroy entire buildings. Seems to be Legato's right-hand man. After Vash disables his saxophone, he dies in a kamikaze attack. Manga Midvalley has questionable loyalty to the GHGs, conspiring with Wolfwood to kill both Knives and Vash, confiding in Hopperd, and inclined towards self-preservation above all else. Killed when he finally made a stand against Legato, his disfigured corpse was then temporarily animated by Legato.
Elendira the Crimsonnail
(Manga only)
Does not appear in the anime. A tall, attractive transvestite who shoots giant spikes with amazing speed. According to Wolfwood, the last and strongest of the GHGs. Subservient only to Knives--even Legato seems to fear her. She lives in a luxury airship with an entire crew at her command.

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