Baccano!/Characters/Characters who Appeared in the Anime
Isaac and Miria
Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent
Isaac voiced by: Masaya Onosaka (JP), J Michael Tatum (EN), Sam Riegel (EN, Durarara!!)
Miria voiced by: Sayaka Aoki (JP), Caitlin Glass (EN), Stephanie Sheh (EN, Durarara!!)
Two less than brilliant partners in crime whose hyperactive enthusiasm for their work is only matched by their staggering lack of common sense. Their history isn't very well known, seemingly appearing out of the blue a couple of years ago and starting one of the most bizarre crime sprees known to man. They've also somehow managed to become literally immortal along the way, a feat which even they are unaware of. Currently, they're attempting their "redemption" by going down the Robin Hood path and stealing the ill-gotten gains of The Mafia... Yeah, no one else quite gets it either.
- Abstract Apotheosis: The Big Bad of 2002 calls Isaac and Miria the embodiment of hope, and excludes them from the hijackings.
- The Atoner: By 1930, Isaac and Miria decide they should "atone" for their (previously rather harmless and silly) crimes Robin Hood style. They mean well but, as the narrator points out, most people would consider that things like stealing the Genoard family inheritance so the family wouldn't fight over who gets what as worse than what they've been doing before.
- Bad Habits: Isaac and Miria dress up as a priest and a nun as one of their many, many pairs of disguises.
- Birds of a Feather: Both harmless robbers with a staggering lack of common sense.
- Blue Eyes: Isaac.
- Brown Eyes: Miria.
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: Despite being about as odd as they come, they are still extremely competent thieves.
- Catch Phrase: "Say, Isaac?" "What's that, Miria my dear?"
- "Incredible!"
- Character Overlap: They show up in Durarara!! as members of the Dollars.
- Chewbacca Defense/You Fail Logic Forever: Played for laughs with a lot of Isaac's arguments for behavior. The second episode has an amusing argument for theft, where he asserts that since cows eat vegetables, if you eat steak you're really eating vegetables too; thus, if you steal a purse, whatever is inside the purse belongs to you.
- A shorter list would involve lines where this does NOT apply to Issac and Miria.
- And no, Miria, you can't "win" conversations. Even if the other guy starts crying.
- Cloudcuckoolander: They once stole a museum door to prevent people from entering. Additionally they continued on their cuckoolander robberies for 70 years without even being the slightest bit aware that they were immortal, until they suddenly realized in 2001 that they didn't appear to be aging. As you can expect, they had a bit of a Freak-Out.
- A very brief Freak-Out, but they were ecstatic to invent an explanation that was even more impossible.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: And Cosplay Otaku Guy. No, the fact that the term "cosplay" wouldn't even be coined for the next fifty years or so doesn't stop them from partaking in it. A pair of life-long fancy dress party goers.
- The Dividual: Twindividual type.
- The Ditz: To the point of realizing 70 years later that they haven't aged a day since the 1930s, and freaking out about it.
- Drives Like Crazy: Never let Isaac drive your car. It'll only end in pain. Horrible, hilarious pain.
- Dumb Blonde: Miria. Isaac is debatable only in whether or not you can consider him blond.
- Miria does sometimes question Isaac's bizarre logic. It's just she's very credulous in accepting his explanations afterward.
Isaac: We've committed eighty-seven robberies these past months. Has there ever been a time that I exposed you to danger?
Miria: Er, about eighty-seven times.
Isaac: ...See? It hasn't even been a hundred yet!
- Played with earlier, Isaac explains his train-robbery scheme after almost a year of failing to strike gold, she looks briefly skeptical... then gives him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
- Dumb Is Good: Well, they are still thieves, so it's for a given value of "good", but that nevertheless puts them at as good if not better than pretty much the entire rest of the cast, and the universe certainly seems to rewards their tireless and infectious optimism.
- The Fools: They are SO clueless and blessed by luck that they become Type III immortals accidentally mere moments before the Big Bad pulls out a machine gun.
- Genius Ditz: Isaac and Miria share a surprising amount of foreign literary knowledge -- they're inexplicably fluent in Japanese and can name one of the few true female Samurai in history, for example -- considering the fact that they are blithering idiots otherwise. Of course, they do tend to get the details mixed up a lot, such as when they claim Billy the Kid is the hero of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
- Genki Girl: Miria.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Yes, even in a series written in Japanese. Namely, Firo manages to massively piss them off enough in The Slash[1] that they start yelling at him in Japanese. Firo was just as confused as you are.
Isaac and Miria: わああん!フィーロの唐変木!無知蒙昧!底抜け凡愚の世間知らずーっ![2]
Firo: Wuh, where’re... What?
- Happily Married: Kinda sorta; the short of it is they enthusiastically love each other and stay together for at least seventy years.
- Hero with an F In Good: As mentioned before, they haven't quite got the whole Atoner part quite right.
- Immortality: Type III, just like everyone else. But it took seventy years to realize it.
- Insane Troll Logic: Well, we can't steal a whole museum...what if we just steal the entrance? Then nobody can get in! Cue door theft.
- Except that stealing the door would cause the police to shut the museum down for an investigation, which means that it worked perfectly.
- So how does one commit a train robbery again? Oh that's right! Take the train somewhere, commit a robbery in town, and then take the train again to escape!
- Keet: Isaac.
- Large Hams: It's part of MO in their crimes, and elsewhere.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: It takes them 70 years to realize it, then they freak out, then they're estatic.
- Lovable Rogues: Yes they're robbers, but they're so friendly and charming and harmless.
- The Messiah: Or, as the title of one episode puts it, "Isaac and Miria Unintentionally Spread Happiness Around Them."
- Monumental Theft: Have stolen several buildings, such as a museum... kind of...
- Ms. Fanservice: Miria. Not so much Isaac.
- Mysterious Past: Isaac is implied to have a bad relationship with his family in San Francisco. Miria, meanwhile, is hinted to have a Dark and Troubled Past.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: A bit in Alice in Jails where Isaac spots an undercover cop and sends Miria to go retrieve a missing wallet just before he's arrested suggests that he's not quite as profoundly stupid as he usually acts.
Man: How lazy. You could have gotten it yourself.
Isaac: You're right... So, shall we go now? To your store?
Man: Why don't we wait for Miria?
Isaac: Nah, it's okay. You're a cop, after all.
- Miria also applies, as it's implied in the same story that she's partially figured out the truth about Ronnie.
- The Other Darrin: Played by Sam Riegel and Stephanie Sheh respectively in Durarara!!.
- Outlaw Couple: Only instead of killing people, they dress up in funny costumes, and are convinced their various robberies are acts of heroic justice.
- Plucky Comic Relief: The funniest non-violent characters in the series. Also the most immune to physical harm.
- Refuge in Audacity: Invoked. This is why their crimes work.
- Single-Minded Twins: Lovers instead of twins, but they share the same wacko train of thought nonetheless.
- Spanner in the Works: To Szilard in 1930.
- They were nice to Ennis, resulting in her betraying him at a crucial moment to save their lives.
- Later, they mugged a group of his pawns and stole the complete Elixir that said pawns were delivering to him. Having no idea what it was, they took it to the Martillo family, thus enabling Firo to devour Szilard.
- Inverted in 2002, where their absence from the cruise ships is what Huey believes is the cause of Fermet's plan being derailed.
- Supporting Protagonist: Given how much screen time they get, and the fact that they serve to unify the otherwise disjointed plot strands, they may be the closest thing the show has to central protagonists. Yet their main accomplishment lies in helping other characters, who act more like traditional heroes, succeed.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: While Ladd's favorite sort of person to kill is someone who never sees it coming, he has no urge to kill Isaac, as the man is simply too oblivious for killing him to be any fun. After all, what's the point laying a man's mortality out before him if he can't tell it from a horse's ass?
- Totally Radical: Dabble in it in 2001.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: Isaac and Miria love donning new and outlandish "disguises" for every caper. Seeing which ones they're currently wearing is probably the easiest way to sort through the Anachronic Order of the series.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Dominoes are serious business, my friends.
- Everything is Serious Business to these two. A good bit of humor comes from the fact that they're idiots who take things too seriously.
- Even being a part of Dollars in Durarara!! is Serious Business for these two!
- Everything is Serious Business to these two. A good bit of humor comes from the fact that they're idiots who take things too seriously.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: They consider some of their petty crimes as big hits.
- "NOOO! We forgot to buy Ennis a present!"
The Martillo family and associates
Firo Prochainezo
Voiced by: Hiroyuki Yoshino (JP), Todd Haberkorn (EN)
An uprising Camorrista that may as well have "MAIN CHARACTER HERE" written on his face, given his brash, cocky nature and talent for kicking people's ass. Firo grew up on the streets of Hell's Kitchen before a run in with the Camorra's primo voto sends him up the ranks as one of their best street fighters. Things become even more interesting after a chance run-in with a mysterious suit-clad woman leads him spiraling unwittingly into a scramble for two wine-bottles that happen to contain the Elixir of Life...
- Actually, I Am Him: At the end of the first book.
- Badass
- Badass Adorable: He looks like he's barely out of his teens and can be rather sweet, and he can kick any given man to next month.
- Badass in a Nice Suit
- Beneath the Mask: While he puts up a good front, he isn't as trauma-free about having Szilard's Ghost Memory as he lets on. He's utterly terrified that Szilard's sadism might eventually affect his own personality.
- Berserk Button: Firo hates being called baby-faced. Ennis recalls that he once broke a man's fingers for doing just that.
- Book Dumb: Inverted. By the end of the anime, as well as the first novel, Firo's head is practically a veritable database of alchemical knowledge. Firo, however, claims he's too dumb to make sense out of most of it.
- He seemed to have eventually sorted it out though, as Maiza is considering asking for Firo's help in dealing with a homunculus made by Szilard's grandchild in 2001. Firo also figured out Huey's way of communication within and outside prison after a few hints being dropped, as Huey merely perfected a method that Szilard researched.
- But Not Too Foreign: Half-Italian and raised in an ethnically segregated neighborhood in New York.
- Card Sharp: Comes with managing the Martillo Family casino.
- Celibate Hero: He is implied to be one in the novels. Not for the usual reasons, but because the woman he's completely in love with is pretty much asexual.
- Temporarily. It only took about 50 years or so for her to agree to the whole marriage bit. We can assume he got lucky... at some point after 2002, where he's suffering from a case of Twice Shy on their twenty-years belated honeymoon.
- Decoy Protagonist: When Gustav and Carol debate who the hero of the series is, Firo is Carol's pick on account of being "Main Character-ish." There is no main character.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Firo has been smitten with the seemingly asexual Ennis pretty much from day one. While he never pressed the issue beyond mentioning to her that he was attracted to her, he did end up "saving himself" for her on the minuscule chance that she'd come around. She does, but not for a long time.
Firo: I ended up spending a damn long time in the blind pursuit for marriage... Only, what... 50 years...?
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: To quote Detective Edward Noah in The Rolling Bootlegs: "It's because you look like a woman, isn't it?"
- Reiterated by Victor in the 1934 arc, where he claims that Firo could be immensely popular in prison due to his young and feminine looks.
- Enemy Within: Firo admits to Maiza in The Slash that he's terrified that consuming Szilard might eventually lead to this. While his fears don't ever come true, a "test" he tried to see if was true set off a chain of events leading to the climax of the story.
- Expecting Someone Taller: Can be applied to him, since he's a badass despite his unassuming form.
- Eye Scream: At the end of 1934.
- Fedora of Asskicking
- Ghost Memory: Of twenty-odd people, by way of Szilard.
- Happily Adopted: Firo considers the Martillo Family to be nothing less than his true one, and has been noted to have nothing less than a nigh-suicidal loyalty for them.
- Happily Married
- Sexless Marriage: Ennis still hasn't quite caught on to the whole sex thing.
- Heroes Want Redheads
- Honorary Uncle: To Charon and Claudia Walken.
- Idiot Hero: Though entirely aware that he is one, and even plays it up on occasion -- such as explaining to Maiza that he can't go and die on him simply because he's too dumb to take his place as the Martillo family bookkeeper.
- Immortality: Type 3
- Improbable Age: Probably one of the more realistic examples, but still commented upon.
- Innocent Cohabitation: With Ennis, after the 1930 arc. This lasts for upwards of fifty years.
- Just a Kid: Dallas's reaction before being curb-stomped.
- Justified Criminal: Back when he was a Street Urchin, though he stayed in organized crime afterwords because he considered the Martillo clan the closest thing he had to a family.
- Lightning Bruiser: Firo's fights usually clock in at less than a minute, which stands out in a series where most characters prefer to take their time.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: Because the whole "bleeding in reverse" is a party trick that never gets old -- even after seventy-two years.
- Love At First Sight: Subverted -- Firo professes falling in love with Ennis at first sight... and then ends up going through the longest courtship process ever because she's all but asexual.
- Magnetic Hero: Ennis notes in Bullet Garden that Firo has a knack for getting people on his side, as he's demonstrated with Angelo, Christopher, and Ladd.
- Mistaken Age: He's a bit annoyed about the time he was detained for trying to leave the country with a "fake" passport that stated he was seventy. Victor's managed to get a legit ID that conveniently has an error in his birthdate to make it look like he's twenty-five, but even that gets raised eyebrows, as most people assume that he can't be any older than sixteen.
- Mouthy Kid: Firo's a little bit too old to truly match the trope, but nearly gives everyone he comes in contact with the impression of one.
- Neighborhood Friendly Gangsters: As Luck puts it, Firo is "someone who is perfectly suited to being a camorrista, and incredibly unsuited to being a criminal."
- Nice Hat: Comes with the job.
- Not So Above It All: When it comes to Isaac and Miria's dominos.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Firo is prone to deliberately playing up his Idiot Hero status, probably because he's Genre Savvy enough to know that Dumb Is Good.
- Occidental Otaku: Turns out that he mastered Japanese by reading raw manga.
- Older Than They Look/Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Pre-immortality, he was an eighteen to nineteen-year-old frequently mistaken for around fifteen. Post-immortality, he's upwards of ninety and still being mistaken for midpubescent.
- Only Sane Man: Firo can't help but notice that a good deal of friends are very, very weird (especially Isaac) and tend to do things like emptying his speakeasy without permission for the sake of a giant dominoes structure.
- Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Hand-holding is terrifying, okay?
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses/Stoic Spectacles: After he takes Maiza's place as conta è oro. He says they're there to make him look smarter and older.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Hmmm, holding out fifty years for your nigh-asexual crush to reciprocate against the odds, or try your luck with someone else? Celibacy it is!
- Straight Man: To Isaac and Miria.
- The Artful Dodger / Satisfied Street Rat: Before joining the Camorra, he actually stumbled into the organization while attempting to pickpocket the organization's primo voto.
- Tsundere: Type A variety, especially in the books where he's generally a confrontational smartass unless he's around people he likes, where he's completely deredere. When Maiza gets him his hat, Maiza even thinks to himself that it's hard to imagine that the Firo he is talking to now was the same one bitching at the police only five minutes ago are even the same person.
- Uke: Whether he actually is one is up to the Yaoi Fangirls to decide but, as Detective Edward notes, he certainly looks like one. Maiza does not respond to this well.
- Underestimating Badassery: As Czeslaw puts it, Firo has "a face that could make children see him as someone to be trifled with."
- Undying Loyalty: it's been noted that Firo would do anything the Martillo family asks of him, up to and including killing himself.
- Waif Fu/Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Discounting the permanently prepubescent Czeslaw, Firo is the second-smallest man in the cast. This will not stop him from kicking your ass.
Maiza Avaro
Voiced by: Mitsuru Miyamoto (JP), Sean Hennigan (EN)
Firo's mentor, and the current bookkeeper of the Martillo family. Maiza's a seemingly unflappable and serene man who rarely seems phased by anything. It might have something to do with that past he never talks about for some reason...
- Berserk Button: As described below, do not mess with Firo in any way, shape, or form. Even insulting him will provoke Maiza to a physically harmless but utterly terrifying Tranquil Fury, and implying, as Victor does in 1934, that you may have actually harmed him will get you implied death threats in return.
- Big Brother Instinct: Towards Firo. Sylvie mentions that Firo is a bit like Maiza's late brother, which might explain why.
- Big Brother Mentor: to Firo
- Blue Blood: In 1705, we find out he's the son of a Spanish aristocrat.
- Dead Little Sister: In the form of a literal dead little brother.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Advena Avis incident, followed by 200-odd years of massive guilt issues. Considering that in 1705 he was a delinquent and the son of a drug-dealing aristocrat, it may go even farther back than that.
- Delinquent: In 1705.
- Eyes Always Shut
- Fail O'Suckyname: "Avaro" means "miser" in Spanish and Italian; "Maiza" sounds similar to the same word in English. Lampshaded by him in 1705.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: attempted in 1930 in the novels, but Firo refuses.
- Immortality: Type 3
- Mercy Kill: In the epilogue of The Drugs and the Dominoes (set in 2002), Maiza contemplates doing this to Begg, who seems doomed to be in a coma for all eternity, but decides against it when he realizes that Begg is in his Happy Place.
- Minored in Asskicking: He's the head bookkeeper. No one except Firo has ever won an initiation fight against him.
- My Greatest Failure: The Advena Avis incident, particularly the death of his brother.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: The Children of Bottle makes a point of noting that Maiza is entirely unaffected by Sylvie's incredibly distracting sexiness
- Obi-Wan Moment: Subverted in the light novels, when he takes Firo aside and politely asks the kid to kill him. Firo's response? "Hell, no!"
- The Older Immortal: Within the Martillo family.
- OOC Is Serious Business: The first time Firo ever sees Maiza lose his composure is when Szilard arrives at Alveare in 1930. Firo immediately realizes that if Maiza is visibly alarmed, the situation must be serious.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old
- Seen It All: Weary traveler type, though he's been known to dip a bit into Smug Know-It-All after getting over his Dead Little Brother.
- Stoic Spectacles
- Tranquil Fury: A detective once makes the mistake of essentially calling Firo the Camorra's Uke in the presence of Maiza. He proceeds to terrify the everlasting shit out of the cop by walking up to him with a polite smile -- giving the distinct impression that he'd slash his throat then and there if he said another word ("We could take what you just said as an insult, you know...").
- Walking the Earth: Sometime around 1970, Maiza decides to embark on a journey to reassemble the survivors of the Advena Avis, giving Firo his position as conta è oro.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: "The harshness of living for eternity..."
Ronnie Schiatto
Voiced by: Nobutoshi Canna (JP), Chuck Huber (EN)
The Martillo family's chiamatore, and one of the few in the group that knew of Maiza's past. In reality he's the "demon" (he considers the term a misnomer) summoned aboard the Advena Avis that granted Maiza and the other alchemists immortality. Partly due to Elmer's request and mostly out of boredom, he's assumed human form and has been hanging around Maiza for the last two hundred years or so. Word of God states that Ronnie is the strongest character in the entire Baccano! series, tied only with Claire Stanfield.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With
- Curtains Match the Window
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Got to admit, watching him set up dominos was hilarious.
- Eldritch Abomination: Closer to this than an actual demon.
- Eyes of Gold
- Expy: Pretty much a less overtly evil version of Nyarlathotep.
- The Faceless: His true form. Normal humans can't grasp it anyways.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Well, when's the last time you met an omniscient, amoral, reality-warping Eldritch Abomination named Ronnie?
- Humanoid Abomination
- I Was Just Passing Through: When Elmer recognizes Ronnie and realizes he followed his request to stay by Maiza's side as a human, Ronnie says it was mostly because he was bored.
- Our Demons Are Different: Although Ronnie doesn't actually consider himself to be one.
- Our Homunculi Are Different: Ronnie is actually a homunculus--not one like Ennis or Christopher, but a "true homunculus" with omniscience and omnipotence who was once confined to a bottle, and was created around 300 BC. He eventually found a way out and became what he is today.
- Prescience Is Predictable: Ronnie ignores his own omniscience for this reason.
- Reality Warper: Implied, though he refuses to use his powers for anyone besides the Martillo family
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: He's likely to be over thousands of years old.
- Secret Keeper: Maiza's. The roles reverse after 1930.
- Smoking Is Cool: Subverted -- Smoking Is Cool only until somebody surprises you and makes you choke on your cigarette.
- Something Only They Would Say: Ronnie is all but revealed as the demon from the Advena Avis when it's shown that he shares the aforementioned demon's Verbal Tic
- Spell My Name with an "S": Ronnie/Lonnie, Sukiart/Suchiato/Suchiart
- Time Abyss: Implied, although his true age is never given.
- Touched by Vorlons: "Strictly speaking, I am no demon... Just an alchemist who had obtained too much knowledge during ancient times..."
- Verbal Tic/Catch Phrase: Typically ends his speech with "well, no matter[3]."
- The Watcher: Ronnie puts rather large self-imposed restrictions on his own abilities to keep things interesting. He's sticking around to watch, not play God.
- World's Strongest Man: Canon and Word of God contained in Narita Saikyou Q&A confirms that Ronnie is the strongest character in his home series, and one of the most five in The Verse. The other four being Shizuo Heiwajima and Claire Stanfield rivaling him, then comes abominations above their league such as Hawking from Vamp! who essentially is a black hole fond of leaping through the universe, and the strongest is No.37564 "Mob Combatant" the Mook who went From Nobody to Nightmare, who tops all of them, for the simple reason Narita made No.37564's whole basis for a character in Hariyama-san, Center of the World is him being exactly the strongest man in the history of time, not much else going for him.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: A man once demanded from Ronnie proof that he was a demon. He obliged by showing him his true form. Immediately afterwards, the only thing said man can remember about it is the overwhelming feeling of fear he experienced.
Others
- Badass Grandpa: Mr. Yagu, the second-in-command.
- Chinese Girl: Lia Linshan
- Cool Old Guy: Yagu again.
- Immortality: All the executives and some of the speakeasy staff have Type 3 as of November 1930.
- The Don: Molsa Martillo
- Those Two Guys: Randy and Pezzo
- True Companions
The Gandor family and associates
The Gandors
An up-and-coming mafia family in New York led by Keith Gandor and his two younger brothers, Berga and Luck.
- Badass Family
- Card Games: The Gandors brothers are usually seen playing these in their spare time. Keith always carries around a deck of cards, and spends most time shuffling or playing solitare with them.
- Even Evil Has Standards: All of the Gandors, particularly Keith, have lines they refuse to cross -- particularly on the matter of drugs.
- Immortality: Type 3
- Freudian Trio:
- Keith (Super-Ego)
- Berga (Id)
- Luck (Ego)
- Japanese Sibling Terminology: Adorably, Luck and Berga call Keith "Kii-nii" in the Japanese-language dialogue, though it's mostly left out of translations due to not having any good English equivalent.
- The Mafia
- Neighbourhood Friendly Gangsters: Even lampshaded by Firo when asked about them: "Yup, real men: just like the outlaws in movies. That's the key reason why these three guys aren't like the Mafia."
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Hilarity Ensues in Drug & the Dominos when they realize they have to punish one of their speakeasy waitresses for insubordination while trying to get around the fact that hitting women back then was something that you just didn't do. Luckily for them, Tick worms his way into the conversation and suggests a Traumatic Haircut, while Claire wonders to himself how they can possibly call themselves gangsters.
- Youngest Child Wins: Firo believes that Luck, the youngest of the Gandor siblings, is the one best fit for running their family.
Keith Gandor
The oldest of the brothers, Keith is the head of the Gandor family. He strongly believes in using traditional mafia rules, as well as refusing to deal with drug dealing. Also has a tendency to go without speaking for long amounts of time. However, he seems to be quite talkative over the phone.
- Card Sharp: Keith cheats the hell out of poker. At least one of the decks he carries is composed of 52 jokers for this very purpose.
- Face of a Thug: "A man who, no matter how one looked at him, didn't seem like he did proper business."
- The Fettered: Operates by a number of rules. One of which is no drug running.
- Happily Married: To Kate
- Perpetual Frowner
- The Quiet One: Keith does not speak very often, and even then he almost never says more that four or five words. The only person that can get him to say more than half a sentence seems to be his wife, Kate -- and even then, only very rarely. The Daily Days actually waive their usual fee for information if he actually says something, meaning his words have monetary value.
- The Stoic
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Keith isn't exactly ugly - just intimidating and suspicious-looking - but Eve is nonetheless surprised to discover that his wife is fricking gorgeous, as well as willing to accept that her husband isn't running one of the most legitimate businesses.
- The Voiceless: In the anime, which doesn't include any of the very rare instances in which he speaks aloud.
Berga Gandor
Voiced by: Kenta Miyake (JP), Phil Parsons (EN)
The second oldest, Berga is more rough-and-tumble than his brothers and prefers to use his physical strength against opposing forces.
- The Berserker: Even before immortality. He's even better at this trope afterward.
- The Big Guy: Class 1, Berserker-type.
- Dumb Muscle: As Firo puts it: "He's an idiot, no matter how you look at it. A big, endearing idiot."
- Henpecked Husband: A few lines in the novels suggest that he is quite submissive to his wife Kalia.
- Implacable Man: Combined with the immortality, Berga's ability to completely ignore even extreme levels of pain makes him someone you really don't want to screw with.
- The McCoy
- Never Bring A Gun To A Fist Fight: Berga is effectively Immune to Bullets. You can shoot him repeatedly in the knuckles at point blank range, and he'll just keep on punching you.
Luck Gandor
Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (JP), Jason Liebrecht (EN)
Although the youngest of the siblings, Luck does most of the talking and business for the family. He's acquainted with Firo, leading the Gandors and Martillos to have good relations.
- A Father to His Men: Luck is good friends with many of his subordinates, and tends to get very, very cross when people attack them -- especially unprovoked. If you're lucky, he'll just beat you to death with a chair. If you're not...well, then you end up like Dallas Genoard.
- Affably Evil: Luck is so remarkably principled for a Mafia executive, and so generally likable and polite to everyone, that it's easy to forget that he would not hesitate to arrange a Fate Worse Than Death for anyone who crosses him. --Although he would give his condolences to their family.
- Big Damn Heroes: He comes to Firo's rescue in the 1930 arc, and to Eve's in Drug & the Dominos, rationalizing all the way.
- Eyes of Gold
- The Face: Keith doesn't talk much, and Berga isn't too bright, so Luck is the one who does the talking for the brothers.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Killed a guy with his own arm.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Fandom likes to pair Luck Gandor with Eve Genoard. Luck's not that big, but Eve still doesn't even reach up to his shoulder.
- Improbable Age: Luck's just about the same age as Firo, and has been shown to have been in an executive position of the Mafia for at least five years before that. The difference is that, while Firo clawed his way up from the bottom for his position, Luck landed his mostly due to family connection -- a fact that he's painfully aware of.
- I Was Just Passing Through: Luck rationalizes quite a few of his more heroic actions, even if the excuses only serve to convince himself. At the end of Drug & the Dominos, he finally admits that he's fooling himself, but feels he's too far gone to The Dark Side for real redemption.
- Just a Kid: In the light novels that reveal Luck's early teenage years in the Gandors' business.
- Man Wearing The Kingly Mask: Luck goes through great lengths to be taken seriously as a mafioso, both because he knows he's not naturally cut out to be that ruthless and a deep-seated fear that not being so could get him killed.
- Minored in Asskicking: Luck would rather Magnificent Bastard his way out of a situation than fight. However, when sufficiently motivated, he performs feats of Badassery that'd make Chuck Norris's jaw drop -- like, say, killing a man three times his size with his own severed arm...)
- Nepotism: Luck didn't have an executive position in the mafia because he was great at it, but because his brothers were in charge. He's built quite a complex over it.
- Noble Demon: According to Firo.
Firo: He definitely knows he's not cut out to be a Mafioso, so he persists in forcing himself, intentionally pretending to be a "ruthless person" to trick himself. But don't get me wrong, I don't really hate him for it...
- Pay Evil Unto Evil: What he does to Dallas Genoard; see the latter's profile, under And I Must Scream.
- Post Dramatic Stress Disorder: In Drug & The Dominos, Luck manages to take out Gustavo with a severed arm, reattach it, make a pithy Bond One-Liner, and even make sure the resident Ingenue hasn't been completely and utterly traumatized before he finally passes out from the pain.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In episode 6, when he patiently explains to Dallas Genoard what a waste of space the Gandors think he is.
- Shoot the Dog: In Drug & the Dominos, he kills Gustavo Baggetta after deliberately preventing Eve Genoard from doing so.
- Team Dad: Particularly after the Gandors acquire Maria. Keeping her in line is a lot like babysitting.
- Tranquil Fury: To the point that he scares Berga with it.
- Tsurime Eyes: The novels actually call attention to it regularly; the most common description given of him is "fox-eyed."
- Younger Than They Look: Luck's Improbable Age isn't immediately obvious because he doesn't look or act like he's under 20.
- Youngest Child Wins: Luck is both the youngest and most focused upon of the three Gandors.
Chic/Tick Jefferson
Voiced by: Kappei Yamaguchi (JP), Adam Dapkus (EN)
A young man working for the Gandors to take care of their enemies. He was taken in by them as a child after his step-father sold him to pay off an overdue loan. Tick has a strangely chipper demeanor for his job, as well as constantly carrying around multiple pairs of scissors.
- Adult Child
- Aloof Big Brother: His younger brother seems to have considered him one.
- The Barber
- Big Brother Instinct: Dallas gets a pair of scissors to his shoulder, his side, and his spine for threatening to throw Tack off a skyscraper.
- Creepy Child: He even weirded out Luck when they first met as kids.
- Dissonant Serenity: Chic is constantly smiling, no matter what he's doing.
- Extreme Doormat: He promises Luck he'll do anything to prove his worth to the Gandors. He'll also do anything that lets him use his scissors.
- Eyes Always Shut
- Holding Hands: With Maria, at the end of the 1933 novels.
- Scissor Nut: to the extent that Tick tends to forget he has them in hand, they pretty much became part of his body.
- Leitmotif: A quirky and faintly creepy whistling theme accompanies his appearances in the anime.
- Parental Abandonment: His step-father sold him to the Gandor family in exchange of not being able to pay them back $1200. He doesn't mind, knowing that his dad will do okay with his younger brother.
- Playing Against Type: ...Ranma!?
- Smarter Than You Look: His step-father, his brother and even Tick himself considers him to be dumb; this isn't entrirely true, Tick has shown that he is very much aware of his surroundings and situation, his interactions with young Luck and later with Maria proves this.
- Spell My Name with an "S": Is it Chic or Tick? Is his brother's name Tock or Tack?
- Torture Technician: From the time he joined the Gandors five years before where the anime starts off.
- Verbal Tic: He has a tendency to elongate words. "Uuum, Dad borrowed money from youuu. Then I've been sold to you as collaaateral for the debt, right? To Mr. Luuuck-"
Claire Stanfield/Felix Walken
Voiced by: Masakazu Morita (JP), Jerry Jewell (EN)
Claire Stanfield, also known as Vino and the Rail Tracer, is the little-known "fourth Gandor Brother" that decided to forgo the career in The Mafia for one much, much bloodier. Claire is the most effective assassin in America, known to strike anytime, anywhere, and with his only trace being the exceedingly bloody remains of his targets. He also has been rumored to have something of a warped sense of justice. Hope to God that you never end up violating it. Word of God states that Claire Stanfield is the strongest character in the entire Baccano! series, tied only with Ronnie.
Did we mention that he's convinced that he's God?
- The Ace: Claire fits all the criteria and gets some deconstruction due to his character as a whole, but unsurprisingly, in the series' merchandise deck of playing cards, Claire is literally an ace--the Ace of Spades.
- Adorkable: When outside of his "Rail Tracer" mode.
- Affably Evil: Off the job, he's a friendly even goofy guy. Even on the job he's pretty nice, so long you don't violate his Orange and Blue Morality.
- A God Am I: One of the relatively less megalomaniacal examples...er, sort of. The only reason he's not trying to rule the world is probably because he's convinced he already is.
- His philosophy is really less "god complex" and more of an extreme form of solipsism: basically, instead of thinking himself as God and everyone else as mortals, he thinks that he is the only person who actually exists and that every other person and thing is just some illusion/show, so it is thus impossible for him to die.
- It doesn't help his ego that whenever someone tries to disabuse him of this notion (that is, by killing him), they fail. Miserably.
- And This Is For: Ladd's buddy Dune gets a particularly gruesome death - even as compared to Claire's other victims - after he gleefully admits to having killed Tony, the old man who mentored Claire in becoming a conductor.
- Ax Crazy: On the job he's as brutal as they come.
- Badass: Holy hell, the biggest one in the series
- Badass Normal: God help us if he ever does become immortal. From the look of the later novels, he never does. But he does become a Badass Grandpa.
- Badass Longcoat: Default attire, when he's not wearing that blood-soaked conductor's uniform.
- Badass Grandpa: A conversation in one of the books set in 2002 indicates that Claire's spending his 90th entirely mortal year on a Caribbean treasure hunt for long-lost pirate treasure. Firo can't help but be annoyed at the unfairness of it all.
- Cultured Badass: He knows how to invite a lady to a restaurant.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: The conductor suit
- Beware the Nice Ones: Despite his unsavory career path and solipsism, Claire is an extremely likable, laid-back, and even sometimes goofy guy who gets along with anyone that can put up with his bizarre quirks. Unless you upset him, in which case he will hurt you in ways you didn't know were possible.
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: When not on the job, Claire seems to be a flighty, over energetic Cloudcuckoolander with a habit of proposing to women he barely knows. Granted, he's pretty kooky on the job too, but in a much more violently proactive way.
- The Butcher: His most common alias, "Vino", refers to his tendency to go way overboard on the bloodshed, to the point that his crime scenes look they're drenched in red wine.
- Ceiling Cling/Wall Crawl: On the outside of a moving train, no less.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: The most severe case in the entire series, he outclasses everyone from humans to any other supernatural being, except Ronnie, in terms of pulling off the absurd.
- Anime -- Kicking at ludicrous speeds, dodging bullets, effortlessly pulling a rope with 3 people hanging on the other end, on the top of a moving train no less.
- Novels -- Parrying swords with scissors, parrying spears with two fingers, reading the trajectory of projectiles fired from behind him by looking at their reflection in the eyes of the opponent in front of him, and then catching said projectiles to fire them back.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Remember that redheaded train conductor in the second episode, and how it totally looked like he got the Red Shirt treatment just before all hell broke loose? Well...
- Circus Brat: Grew up as one.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Not as bad as, say, Isaac and Miria but he does tend to act like flighty oddball when off the job.
- Curb Stomp Battle: Jesus Christ. Claire Stanfield versus anybody at all.
- Deus Exit Machina: Word of God states that Claire isn't allowed to have his own book because he could probably solo the entire Baccano! universe in less than thirty pages if properly motivated. Luckily, he's a flighty, irresponsible Wild Card, so he's easy to write both in and out of the story.
- Dodge the Bullet: On the Flying Pussyfoot.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Claire's back-up plan in case Chane didn't think anything of him when he finds her. Claire admits that he would make her love him even if it would take a long time for her to reciprocate. Luckily for him, Chane is a lot faster at reciprocating his feelings than Ennis is at reciprocating Firo's feelings.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Claire is like this with pretty much every woman ever, to the annoyance of his stepbrothers.
- Engaging Conversation: All. The. Time. And it's always Serious Business for him. Chane's just the first person to (eventually) accept the proposal.
Claire: I just thought of something. If you and I marry, I will become Huey's son. Then I will be your family as well, so the problem will have disappeared. You can think of it as a joke if you will, but I'm serious. Unlike your "friends," I won't betray you. I won't try to obtain the secret of immortality from Huey either because I don't need something like that. Knowing that whether I am immortal or not, I won't die no matter what... That's what I believe, so keep silent and just believe me. I am a guy who will never die.
- Even Crazy Has Standards: Although completely psycho, Claire does have a personal code of honor and reserves most of his horrors for the people who violate it in some way -- for instance, by threatening the safety of the passengers of the Flying Pussyfoot while he's on the job as a conductor. He also rethinks his original plan to wait out Ladd and Chane's fight and kill the winner, instead siding with Chane after learning that she's opposed to the Lemures' plan, and he goes out of his way to save Isaac and Miria because they're good customers.
- It's generally accepted that if Claire decides to kill or hurt you, you've done something to deserve it.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The fandom almost universally refers to the redheaded conductor that shows up in the second episode and credits as Young Conductor. It's eventually revealed that he does have a name -- Claire Stanfield -- but the reveal of it is so spoileriffic that people usually refer to Young Conductor and Claire as if they're entirely different people until The Reveal.
- Eye Scream: One of Claire's feats that did not make it into the anime was him gouging Spike's eyes off, right after the scene where Claire proposes to Chane and saves her from getting shot in the back by Spike.
- Fearless Fool: He's convinced that he's immortal. Literally.
- Finger Wag: Claire does this in the middle of episode 13.
- Five-Finger Fillet: Does this for fun with his own hand and Chic's scissors in Drug & Dominos".
- Gender Blender Name: No wonder he goes by so many different nicknames. Turns out he was named after his grandfather--Claire was a masculine name before the 1900s.
- This is indirectly lampshaded in The Grand Punk Railroad by Isaac and Miria when discussing Frankenstein's monster (or, as Isaac calls him, "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelly")
Miria: You're so smart, Isaac!... But isn't 'Mary' a girl's name?
Isaac: There are plenty of men out there with feminine names! Besides, there's no telling what kind of name a monster might have!.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: As the Rail Tracer.
- Happily Married: To Chane.
- Heroines Want Redheads: Eventually Chane towards our show's resident Ax Crazy Awesome Sociopathic Hero.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Christopher seemed to be fighting against Claire on equal grounds, they had a lengthy conversation during their bout; Claire taking care of his front while Chane watched his back against Liza, it did look like he needed as Chris was enough of a problem to him. It turned out they weren’t, Claire prolonged the fight on a whim, he wanted to fight alongside Chane for as long as possible, as soon as Claire told her to leave and assist their friends, he overthrew Chris and Liza in an instant.
- I Have Many Names: Much to the annoyance of the Gandors, who have trouble keeping up with all of them. After the 1931 incident, he settles for the name "Felix Walken". Enforcing that no one may call him Claire ever again, except for Chane.
- Improvised Weapon: Claire isn't particularly picky with what he uses to hurt people. Past examples include guns, knives, scissors, train tracks, his own teeth...
- Informed Ability: Claire is supposed to be a genius, or at least was in his teens. The prologue for The Slash arc had Huey very interested in a rumor about a "red-haired kid adopted by The Gandors" who could assimilate any knowledge or ability properly taught to him ridiculously fast. Because of this, Huey himself tried to recruit Claire for his purposes. Unfortunately for Huey this happened after Claire had already left for the Circus.
- Also his overall strength, Narita seems to be fond of placing Claire at an immensurable pedestal when asked just how strong Claire really is. In the 3rd book Narita says Claire is the strongest character in the series by far, and in The Verse he is somehow comparable to Eldritch Abominations; still not that bad as at that point only capable brawlers and Immortals were introduced, but when The Reveal about Ronnie also being an ungodly Eldritch Abomination happens, Narita still places Claire as the strongest being in the series, in fact, Claire is often used as indicator of strength in the series by being compared to other characterfs, with them being weaker, comparable or an equal to him.
- Insane Troll Logic: Claire's theory as to why the world revolves around him is built upon this. Firo and the Gandors have long ago given up on trying to prove him wrong.
- Insufferable Genius: Claire will not let you forget that he is better than you.
Nick: Please, I'm beggin' you! Just havin' you on our side'd make us almost invincible!
Claire: Take out the "almost" part.
- Irony: Claire (as Felix) only allows Chane to still call him Claire. The irony of a mute woman being the only person in the world allowed to call such "sacred" name has not gone unnoticed by other characters, although no one's been bold enough to comment on it to Claire's face.
Felix: Claire is the name of my soul. Only Chane's allowed to call me that. What part of that don't you understand?
- It's All About Me: Claire is literally convinced that the world revolves around him, much to the dismay of everyone around him.
- I Will Find You: Towards Chane after he's forced to separate from her. He eventually finds her in Episode 15.
- Late Arrival Spoiler: For anime fans the fact that the Young Conductor is Claire Stanfield is the ultimate spoiler for the series, it is revealed on the 9th episode of a 13 episode anime (sans the extras), so it should be discussed with caution. In Japan however, where the novels fared better than the anime, this is no big deal, the Rail Tracer is revealed in the 3rd book of a series that has surpassed more than a dozen of volumes and he is one of the most popular characters to boot, and since the reveal Claire has done too many notable things to be kept in secrecy on discussions.
- Let's Get Dangerous: Unthreatened or off the job, Claire tends to behave more like an energetic Cloudcuckoolander than a notoriously infamous assassin. Then he bites your fingers off.
- This, of course, will be completly played straight if he ever goes full power against some future foe.
- Love At First Sight: Claire believes that when he first told Chane that he would save her, it was Love At First Sight for him. Granted, he thinks this for every cute girl he meets...
- Madness Makeover: Covering himself in blood when becomes the Rail Tracer.
- Make Sure He's Dead: Claire is very thorough with his kills to make absolutely sure there's no way his target couldn't be dead.
- Man Bites Man: Claire severs Czeslaw's fingers with his teeth on the Flying Pussyfoot.
- Meaningful Name: He soaks himself in his victims' blood, which is described as red as wine. "Vino" means "wine" in Italian.
- Meaningful Rename: To Felix Walken, since the legally dead Claire can't marry anyone.
- Mutilation Interrogation: To put it simply, there was a lot of blood and screaming. Not that, you know, the series was short on either blood or screaming.
- Not Named in Opening Credits: An interesting case: he goes unnamed in the credits, but still appears in them as a seemingly bit character.
- One-Man Army: The train contained two groups of a dozen or so armed thugs apiece. Claire slaughtered nearly all of them singlehandedly with what seemed like very little effort, and still found time to torture Czeslaw for trying to get more innocent passengers killed, convince Ladd to throw himself off the train, save Isaac and Miria, and propose to Chane while covered in blood.
- Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Jerry Jewell's voice credits include the talkative Serial Killer Barry the Chopper in Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Although, he is also Jimmy Kudo, who stops murderers using logic and deduction.
- Playing Against Type: On the other hand, Masakazu Morita is generally known for straight-up heroes like Tidus, Ichigo and Maeda Keiji. Claire is pretty much anything but Morita's usual type.
- And Jerry Jewell also plays Jin and Jimmy Kudo who are vastly different from Claire.
- Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner/Shout-Out: When Claire decides to finally pull one out in Drug & the Dominos, he decides to make it count -- by quoting the first spoken lines of dialog in the history of film.
Claire: You ain't heard nothing yet!
- Professional Killer
- Psycho for Hire: He's a nutjob who'll take murder contract against just about anyone Even himself!
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: As Rail Tracer.
- Red Headed Anti-Hero
- Redheaded Stepchild: The literal redheaded stepchild of the Gandor family before running off to the circus.
- Red Herring Shirt: Masquerades as a Red Shirt up until The Reveal, at which point he cuts loose and almost instantly doubles the show's body count.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Claire goes on one after discovering that one of the white-suits killed his conductor buddy, Tony, starting with the murderer and extending to pretty much anyone who's vaguely associated with said murderer.
- Sacrificial Lamb: A subversion: He initially starts off as a textbook case -- he shows up in both the OP and ED (though never quite as a named character), is voiced by a particularly well known seiyuu, gets a fair number of lines in his introductory episode, and finally gets unceremoniously killed off at the very end of episode 2. Then episode 9 rolls along and...
- Serial Romeo: Claire's dating strategy consists of falling madly in Love At First Sight with a random woman, proposing to them within their first conversation, getting rejected, and then quickly moving on to his next One True Love. Much to the Gandors' surprise, this eventually ends up working.
- Serious Business: His Engaging Conversations.
- Sixth Ranger: He would partially count for the Gandors, working for them at request, but Claire was always a Gandor by a technicality. The real example comes when he becomes Felix Walken; when he swore loyalty towards Chane, Felix also extended it to Jacuzzi's gang, which Chane is part of.
- Slasher Smile
- Serial Romeo: Claire's a bit too invested in the idea of Love At First Sight for his own good ("You proposed to a complete stranger again, didn't you?").
- Showy Invincible Hero: Only played straight in the novels, unfortunately. Claire has won every single fight he has been in, and by this trope's sake all of them with little to no effort at all, and exploited by being often the final and/or decisive battle of a particular arc. Lord may help any future villains if Narita ever drops Claire's resident status as the Wild Card and makes him pull the Let's Get Dangerous card for the first time ever.
Claire: When you’re fighting demons in those fairy tales, you’ll need the hero in fairy tales! In other words, me.
- Sociopathic Hero: His moral code is pretty heroic, if you put aside the fact he kills for a living and employs countless methods of torture.
- Super Strength: Though not often demonstrated, The Slash: Bloody to Fair shows that he's capable of warping a steel door by simply pressing his hand against it.
- That Man Is Dead: Claire Stanfield is legally dead, as he was counted as one of the victims of the Pussyfoot massacre. He bought the Felix Walken name from the retired assassin to legally marry Chane without complications, and insists that people call him Felix Walken instead of Claire.
- Technicolor Eyes: Katsumi Enami had varying colors for Claire's eyes during the Light Novels run:
- Eyes of Gold: The default, to match Chane.
- Hazel Eyes: Some of Enami's art shows Claire with hazel eyes; he also appears to have this color eyes in the anime once he discards his Rail Tracer persona.
- Curtains Match the Window: Not the Rail Tracer kind. In a page spread for Another Junk Railroad, Claire literally has red eyes, the same shade as his hair. He also appears to have red eyes in some of his Rail Tracer scenes in the anime.
- Eyes of Gold: The default, to match Chane.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He makes a point of doing a 'thorough job' when killing someone.
- Torture Technician: Knows how to inflict pain in ways not even Fermet thought of in 100 years.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Claire's penchant for erratic name-changing leads to a situation where someone ends up hiring him to kill himself. He plays along. Violent hilarity ensues.
- Ubermensch
Claire: Those who are strong can afford to show compassion...and I am strong!
- The Unfettered
- Unholy Matrimony: With Chane. They actually end up quite Happily Married.
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: All while covered in blood and standing on top of a speeding train too.
- Walking Spoiler: It's really hard to talk about the series without revealing that he is the young conductor and the Rail Tracer.
- What a Drag: Inflicts this on various mooks (and Czeslaw) in 1931, off the back of a train no less.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: While Clair was a not too unpopular boy's name at the time he was born, Claire was a significantly more popular girl's name at the time of the series proper. The Grand Punk Station: Express Episode notes his annoyance with this.
- Wild Card: The only loyalties he has are towards the Gandors, Chane and by proxy Jacuzzi's Gang -- and he's even willing to dick around with the former for shits and giggles.
- With the loyalty part secured for the Gandors, Luck still doesn't like to rely on him that much. Claire is too much of a Ultimate Wild Card that Luck deliberately refuses many of Claire's offerings for help, claiming that it would make their henchmen useless and lazy to do anything.
- World's Strongest Man: Canon and Word of God contained in the Great Punk Railroad - Express Episode and later in Narita Saikyou Q&A confirms that Claire Stanfield is the strongest character in his home series, and one of the most five in The Verse. The other four being Shizuo Heiwajima and Ronnie rivaling him, then comes abominations above their league such as Hawking from Vamp! who essentially is a black hole fond of leaping through the universe, and the strongest is No.37564 "Mob Combatant" the Mook who went From Nobody to Nightmare, who tops all of them, for the simple reason Narita made No.37564's whole basis for a character in Hariyama-san, Center of the World is him being exactly the strongest man in the history of time."
- Would Hit a Girl: Claire Stanfield supports gender equality.
- Vague Age: "Around twenty years old" in 1932, and "Around ninety years old" in 2002.
The Russo family and associates
Ladd Russo
Voiced by: Keiji Fujiwara (JP), Bryan Massey (EN)
Ladd Russo is a man of few wants. He likes to talk a lot and he likes to kill a lot, and anything beyond that is purely superfluous. He works as the hitman of the Russo family, mostly because they figured that if they had to deal with his constant homicidal tendencies anyway, they might as well put them to good use. Of course, even the regular opportunities for gratuitous slaughter are just sometimes not enough for him, and he has to go search for his own means of bloody amusement. Hijacking the Flying Pussyfoot, for example...
- Affably Evil / Laughably Evil: He's so energetic and hammy and funny, he's still likable even when he's dancing on someone's corpse. His fiance/MoralityPet helps.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Well, Lua certainly does. Caitlin Glass (Miria's VA) also admits some Perverse Sexual Lust for him on the DVD Commentary.
- Artificial Limbs: Gets one before his stay in Alcatraz in the Alice in Jails arc.
- Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: Ladd shows off his love for Lua -- in his own psychotic, demented way, of course -- during his Life or Limb Decision to save her. Of course, he's still a psychotic, demented bastard.
- Ax Crazy: Called on it by his uncle; it's practically his job description.
- Badass in a Nice Suit
- Badass Normal: In a world of immortals and people with Super Strength and super reflexes, he still manages to be one of the most dangerous characters.
- Beast and Beauty: With Lua. Of course, with Ladd being... well, Ladd, love is usually professed through gratuitous death threats.
- Bishounen: In the manga, he seems to be much more than in the show and novels.
- Blond Guys Are Evil
- Bi the Way In the game, you can make him marry Claire, but he still admits that he still loves Lua, but not as much as Claire.
- Blood Knight: Of all the characters, he loves violence the most.
- Blue Eyes
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Headshoting ten-year-olds is hilarious, amirite?
- Even Evil Has Standards: This may not count, but Ladd has standards: he only likes killing people who don't think they will ever die. This is why he spared Graham's life when the two fought; Graham had given up and said Ladd was free to kill him, which ruined all of Ladd's fun.
- It is implied he actually spared his uncle because they were family
- It would seem the main reason he kills people who don't think that they'll ever die is because he detests the arrogant.
- Faux Affably Evil
- For the Evulz: All the killing, maiming, and other assorted horrible deeds that Ladd gets up to are generally because of this and nothing more.
- Freudian Excuse: Inverted. Ladd was a homicidal lunatic to begin with, but the death of his first girlfriend Leila limited his range of targets to people who don't believe they can be killed.
- I Call It Vera: It doesn't look like he's named his shotgun, but he is prone to kissing it.
- Incoming Ham: "THANK YOU! FUCK YOU! THE STAR IS HERE!" All while posing and flailing dramatically.
- Insult Backfire: "Your attempts at flattery are so ham-handed..."
- Kick Them While They Are Down: 47 times.
- Knife Nut: Along with a shotgun and his bare fists, knives seems to be one of his preferred weapons.
- Lady and Knight: A very weird example with Lua. Ladd has traits of the white knight (attraction to Lua because of her gentle personality, protects her at the cost of his arm and is engaged to her) but he doesn't wants anyone to kill her because he wants to be the one to do it.
- Large Ham: From his shouting, to his shooting, to punching someone while listing famous american boxers, his presence is huge.
- Life or Limb Decision: Ladd sacrifices his left arm in preventing Claire from killing Lua.
- Made of Iron: Punches a rail post so hard that it ( and his arm) explodes. In a flashback, he takes a high-speed wrench to the gut without flinching.
- Man in White
- Morality Pet: Lua, to a certain degree.
- Nepotism: Placido thought of dropping Ladd in an Asylum each time after his nephew raised trouble in NY, but Ladd is the best hitman the Russo Family ever had, so Placido turned a blind eye each time.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ladd's specialty.
- Odd Friendship: During Alice in Jails, he forms a good friendship with Firo and Isaac, of all people.
- Along with his childhood friend Who.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Both to Lua and Graham. It's his sick little way of showing his love.
- Playing Against Type: In English, Ladd Russo's voice actor Brian Massey is....Oolong the pig? No seriously, he is.
- Psycho for Hire: Ladd's an interesting variation in that he mostly gets work because he's the nephew of the head of the Russo family.
- Refuge in Audacity: Probably the reason why he's so popular.
- Slasher Smile: His default expression.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: His first girlfriend Leila was from the family of an influential politician. Ladd is the nephew of the Russo Family boss. She was killed during elopement.
- Villain Protagonist: Well everyone is technically a protagonist and he serves this role to Claire on the Flying Pussyfoot.
- White Shirt of Death: The plan was to get it splattered with other people's blood. That didn't work out too well.
- Would Kill A Child: Ladd blows off a $10,000 job just so he could demonstrate that, yes, he would hurt a child.
Ladd: You're just so sure I'm not going to do this * BOOM*
- Would Hit a Girl: Leeza would have learned the hard way, if not for Firo's intervention.
- You Will Be Spared: "I'll kill you last" is Ladd's way of telling you he likes you.
- Younger Than They Look: His looks and voice (either in Japanese or English) sure doesn't make one realize that he just turned 25 years old.
Lua Klein
Voiced by: Eri Yasui (JP), Carrie Savage (EN)
Ladd's fiancee, a soft-spoken and docile Death Seeker. Ladd has promised to kill her after he's killed everyone else, being uninterested in killing people who actually want to die.
- Beast and Beauty: Look at her fiance, and then at her.
- Curtains Match the Window
- Dissonant Serenity: Never appears to be bothered by her lover's carnage.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: "I can't wait to kill you" are probably the most romantic words in the English language for her.
- Hidden Depths: In the novels she seems to understand Ladd's emotional dependency on her and stays around because she loves him.
- Lady and Knight: A very weird example with Ladd. Lua would be a bright lady (beauty, innocence, emotional support for her knight) if she weren't looking forward to being killed by him.
- Mad Love
- Morality Pet: Subversion. While she's in the near-perfect position to be the morality pet, she actually serves to underscore Ladd's crazy rather than cull it.
- And yet, played straight in that Ladd sacrifices his arm to save her.
- The Quiet One
- Rapunzel Hair
- Spider Sense: Mild version. In the novels, Ladd claims that Lua's intuition had saved him from death multiple times. Unfortunately for him, Lua warns him of danger just as she is climbing onto the roof of the Flying Pussyfoot.
- Too Dumb to Live: She finds out her boyfriend's tangled up with a crazy mass murderer, so what does she do? Goes to find him and warn him! Of course, she is batshit insane and may be doing it on purpose....
- Woman in White
Graham Specter
Voiced by: Tomokazu Sugita (JP), Chris Patton (EN)
One of Ladd's loyal underlings. After being defeated by Ladd in battle, Graham decided to follow him. His favored weapon is a gigantic wrench, and he had the uncanny ability to strip cars down to nuts and bolts in mere seconds. Also, he never stops talking.
- Affably Evil: Oddly polite, even at his most psychotic.
- Ambiguously Gay: Some fans suspect this might be the case, mainly because of his massive fanboying of Ladd and his complete disrespect for other men's personal space. He also seems to really like Jacuzzi.
Graham: [to Jacuzzi] I like you. You can use this warehouse any time you want. It's my property. Later! Let's meet again someday. When that annoying redhead isn't there, that is.
- Ax Crazy: Rivals Ladd's.
- Bi the Way/Depraved Bisexual: Probably. Graham's bromantic fanboying of Ladd -- and liking Jacuzzi -- certainly says much, but he also stated that he prefers older women. Also, shown below, his "first love" was his sister. He briefly takes a liking to Chane, but it has probably more or less to do with Chane being a Worthy Opponent and Graham having a bit of an In Love with Your Carnage moment while they were fighting.
- In the light novels, he briefly falls in love with Huey's homunculus, Sickle.
- Bishonen
- Body Horror: As a child, Graham's parents scolded him for taking things apart and was told to consider how it might feel to be on the receiving end. Little Graham took this to heart and dislocated every single one of his joints with the exception of his right hand (he used it to take himself apart).
- Brother-Sister Incest: A line in the novels say that Graham's "first love" was his sister. No other information has been released about her yet. This has lead fans to speculate that Graham may be bisexual.
- Catch Phrase: "Let's make a sad, sad story..."
- At least, this is the most common. Graham's rants tend to fixate on certain topics and all have their own special catchphrases.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Possibly the most extreme example in the anime as in the novels he is overshadowed quite quickly, he can use his wrench to smash a ten-foot-wide crater, deflect bullets, and even completely take apart a car in seconds.
- Chewing the Scenery
- Chris Patton: The DVD Commentary notes that this is just "a very Chris Patton kind of role."
- Defeat Means Friendship: How did Ladd Russo become his bestest friend in the whole wide world? By kicking his ass.
- Fan Boy: # 1 fanboy of Ladd Russo and proud of it.
- Fetish: For disassembling or just flat out breaking stuff.
- Gratuitous English: Well, in the Japanese dub. LAVU AND PEEEEEEES!
- Hero Worshipper: Graham is pretty much convinced that Ladd is the second coming of Christ.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Let us reiterate: Hero Worships Ladd.
- Improbable Hairstyle: As the cast commentary notes, there is entirely no way to justify how Graham - a loony mechanic living in the 1930s - is capable of maintaining that J-rocker haircut of his.
- Improbable Weapon User: A monkey wrench
- Implausible Fencing Powers: A monkey wrench he can use to catch shotgun bullets.
- Large Ham: You know he never stops talking? He never talks quietly either. And he tends to be constantly moving and breaking things while monologuing.
- Likes Older Women: Seemingly.
Graham: Kidnapping a growing woman is exciting in itself, but unfortunately, I am into older women!
- Mad Artist: Graham thinks taking apart things - and people - is a beautiful goal in life.
- Made of Steel: Survives his insane battle with Ladd. Also fights and defeats Christopher, one of Lamia's best fighters.
- Moment Killer: He tries to kill the moment for Claire. Claire doesn't let him.
- Motor Mouth: And damn near to the point of full out schizophasia.
- Mood Swinger: Rapidly cycles from one emotion to another, almost always expressing it in its extreme.
- No Sense of Personal Space
- Peek-a-Bangs
- The Philosopher: A villainous one who changes his philosophy as it suits him but nonetheless.
- Playing Against Type: His Japanese voice actor is Tomokazu Sugita. That would be Kyon and Yuuichi for those in the know, and Graham is about as far from those as you can get.
- Talkative Loon: Holy shit, does Graham love to talk.
- Technical Pacifist: Graham's not a pacifist by any means, but he'll never kill anyone because it makes him feel guilty afterwards.
- Warrior Poet: We have no idea what the hell he's saying, but it sure sounds poetic...
- "Time spent in boredom is good." This, following a long rant about "DEATH TO TEDIUM". True wisdom, Graham.
Jacuzzi's gang
Jacuzzi Splot
Voiced by: Daisuke Sakaguchi (JP), Joel McDonald (EN)
Nice's long-time boyfriend and co-leader. Jacuzzi may look like a sniveling, hopeless coward, but that's only because he is a sniveling, hopeless coward...most of the time. It's probably not a good idea to piss him off, or else you might find out just why the Russo family has such a high bounty on his head.
- Adorkable: He's cute, awkward and cries a lot.
- Apologises a Lot: Jacuzzi offers apologies for things including being run into and introducing himself.
- Badass Adorable: Jacuzzi's basically a timid, adorkable, baby-faced teenager who somehow manages to out-badass nearly all the badasses in a World of Badass.
- Badass Normal: He's not immortal, he doesn't have Charles Atlas Superpower, he's just a kid.
- Badass on Paper: He's the leader of a gang of bootleggers, destroyed 18 Russo Family speakeasies in a single night, survived the Pussyfoot Train incident including fighting unarmed with a single, tiny bomb against someone with a flamethrower, stood up to Ladd Russo, willingly almost fought Claire, sacrificed himself to protect someone from being harmed, and has a sword tattoo on his face. He's also a timid Shrinking Violet who cries all the time, not the least bit physically intimidating, has no special skills, and one of the nicest characters in the entire cast.
- Berserker Tears: He cries
evenespecially while kicking ass. - Beware the Nice Ones: The reason he has a bounty on his head.
- Chaste Hero: Even though they've effectively been "together" for ten years, Jacuzzi doesn't kiss Nice until he goes to drive the Lemures off the train and thinks he might not be coming back.
- Cowardly Lion: While capable of complete badassery when needed, he is incredibly awkward around people he doesn't know and is easily scared by nearly everything to the point of tears otherwise.
- The title of episode five sums it up - "Jacuzzi Splot Cries, Gets Scared, And Musters Reckless Valor".
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Holy shit, don't fuck with this kid...
- Distinguishing Mark: The sword tattoo on his face.
- Embarrassing Tattoo: Jacuzzi treats his facial tattoo like one. If you're wondering why Jacuzzi of all people would get a ginormous tattoo on his face, it does get addressed.
- Expecting Someone Taller: This guy robbed eighteen Mafia owned speakeasies? In one night!?
- Fail O'Suckyname: But don't let it fool you!
- Foreign Sounding Gibberish: Not the only one, as you may have noticed, but certainly the most amusing example.
- Fragile Flower
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Tends to beat himself up over every mistake, including ones that weren't even his.
- Let's Get Dangerous: "Jacuzzi Splot Cries, Gets Scared and Musters Reckless Valor."
- Magnetic Hero: There's a reason he's co-leader.
- Martyr Without a Cause: Has demonstrated this tendency on a relatively regular basis. For example -- attempting to turn himself in to Graham in return for Chane's safety, even though he's known her for mere hours at most.
- The Messiah: Jaccuzi makes a point of trying to be nice to nearly anyone and everyone he meets, provided they're not looking to hurt his friends.
- Not So Weak: Part of the reason the Lemures failed.
- One-Man Army: Once again, he raided eighteen Russo speakeasies single handedly, in a single night.
- Older Than They Look: While the disparity between apparent age versus real age starts off pretty small (maybe a year or two), Jacuzzi's boyishness persists over the course of the series. By Alice in Jails he's probably in his early twenties, but still looks like he's in his mid-teens.
- Screams Like a Little Girl
- She Will Not Cry So I Cry For Her: Jacuzzi towards Nice.
- Shrinking Violet: Jaccuzi once broke down crying just trying to introduce himself.
- Tattooed Crook
- Unfortunate Names: Jacuzzi Splot. Jacuzzi Splot! JACUZZI! SPLOT!
- Victorious Childhood Friend: Nice's.
Nice Holystone
Voiced by: Yuu Kobayashi (JP), Colleen Clinkenbeard (EN)
One of two leaders of a small-time gang of delinquents and rum-runners. Nice's highly apparent scars hint at her sometimes dangerous fondness for explosions. And by fondness, we mean full-blown fetish. Best not to let this girl near a lighter.
- Awesome McCoolname: Unlike Jacuzzi Splot, hers is a name people would like to have.
- Cargo Ship: In-Universe. Nice really likes explosives. Yes, in that way.
- Childhood Friend Romance
- Cool Big Sis: Acts this way towards most of Jacuzzi's gang.
- Eyepatch of Power: She even hides a bomb in it.
- Eye Scream: That explosives fetish of hers has caused problems in the past...
- Fetish: For explosions.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Antihero scars.
- Mad Bomber: Did we mention she likes to see things go boom? Because really she likes to see things go boom, fire safety be damned.
- Ms. Fanservice: The straightest example in the series. Jacuzzi's a lucky dog.
- Scars Are Forever: After her rather disastrous experiments with explosives as a child.
- Scary Shiny Glasses
- Specs of Awesome
- Stuff Blowing Up
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Stabbed a mook in the head with a knife... and left a bomb attached to the hilt.
- There Was a Door: Nice does not care if your door was already open -- she will blow it up anyway.
- Lampshaded by Donny and Nick in Episode 15:
Donny: Nice, the place was open. Why'd you blow it up?
Nick: Now Donny, what kind of question is that? The boss likes to blow stuff up.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Have we mentioned she likes explosives?
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: She becomes a sort of tomboy to Chane's girly girl once Chane falls in with the gang.
Donny
Originally from Mexico, Donny traveled by himself to the US. As a member of Jacuzzi and Nice's gang, he's pretty much responsible for taking out anyone who threatens the gang.
- The Big Guy: Type C
- Big Damn Hero: When Jacuzzi was cornered by a Russo thug, Donny broke the guy's hand.
- Dumb Muscle: Subverted. While his size and strength do come in handy, he has at least average intelligence. Also, since he's from Mexico, he speaks two languages.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Does this when a Russo mook pulled a gun on Jacuzzi.
- Hulk Speak: In the Japanese version.
- The Quiet One: Almost never raises his voice above a mumble.
Chaini
A member of Jacuzzi's gang. Nothing is known about Chaini aside from her infamous Hyahah~ moments. It's unknown if she's actually greeting anyone like it appears in the dub, or if it is just one of her tics.
- Nerd Glasses
- No Name Given: In the anime.
- Perpetual Smiler: most likely the only character in the series to show a genuine innocent smile all the time, unlike all the others.
- The Speechless: even in the novels.
- Tagalong Kid
- Verbal Tic: Hyahah!
The Genoard family
Eve Genoard
Voiced by: Marina Inoue (JP), Jād Saxton (EN)
A young lady on the lookout for her older brother, Dallas, after he disappeared from the Genoard household two years beforehand after her family was robbed of their money by a pair of thieves.
- Badass Damsel: A sweet and polite young lady who escapes her kidnappers and doesn't hesitate to avenge her father. She may not know about the family business, but she has the same iron will.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Once she learns that Gustavo murdered her father and brother in Drug & the Dominos, Eve loses nearly all resemblance of her ingenue status and immediately tries to blow off his head with a discarded revolver. The only thing that stops her is Luck deliberately taking the bullet and finishing off the guy himself.
- Curtains Match the Window
- The Ingenue: A sweet and polite young lady. So much so that Nick got in trouble for using her. Subverted in Drug & the Dominos -- see Beware the Nice Ones and Not So Different.
- Lonely Rich Kid
- Mafia Princess: She believes her family makes most of its money from textiles.
- Morality Pet: To Dallas... sort of.
- Not So Different: After trying to call Luck out for what he did to Dallas, Eve realizes that she can be just as remorselessly vengeful as he when she immediately responds to the discovery that Gustavo murdered her father and oldest brother by trying to blow his head off. She admits as much, and apologizes to Luck for her previous words, just before pulling the trigger.
- Oblivious Younger Sibling
- This Is Unforgivable!: In Drug & the Dominos after Gustavo Baggetta brags that he killed her father and oldest brother. See Beware the Nice Ones above.
Dallas Genoard
Voiced by: Atsushi Imaruoka (JP), Ian Sinclair (EN)
Eve Genoard's missing brother and grade-A asshole. Spent most of the time picking fights, pissing away money on booze, and generally being a complete dick. The one chink in his armor is his sister Eve, of whom he seems to be rather protective.
- And I Must Scream: Partial example. Luck decided to put him and his friends in barrels filled with cement and dump them in the river, with their Healing Factors keeping them constantly drowning to death. However, their incomplete version of the elixir means they would have eventually died of old age, and a couple years later Luck lets Eve drudge them out as long as they don't mess with the Gandors anymore.
- Asshole Victim
- Big Brother Instinct: Although as with everything else he does, he mostly fails at acting on it.
- Butt Monkey: Dallas pretty much gets kicked around by everyone. Given what kind of person he is, we might actually enjoy it.
- Cement Shoes
- Even Evil Has Standards: Depends on what you mean by "evil", but he's pretty terrified of Szilard, especially after he devours one of his partners. The only reason he's working for him is because Szilard promised him money.
- Healing Factor: Dallas is an "incomplete" immortal, meaning he'll recover from any sort of physical harm, but still ages naturally.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: High on the "ineffectual", low on the "sympathetic."
- Iron Butt Monkey: Dallas when his deaths are being Played for Laughs. It's justified in that he is actually immortal.
- Jerkass: You will not like Dallas. This is a fact. However, once he is pulled out of the river in The Slash and finally returned to Eve, he actually turns over a new leaf and becomes a beloved philanthropist. I'm not kidding.
- Kick the Dog: Dallas seems entirely composed of these, which is probably why he gets his ass kicked so often.
- Out-Gambitted: After murdering some of the Gandors' men, Dallas figures he can pin it on that Street Urchin that kicked his ass earlier that day -- two birds with one stone, right? Not when said Street Urchin is Luck Gandor's childhood friend, you can't.
- Pet the Dog: His only redeeming quality is his affection and protectiveness of his little sister, Eve.
- Smug Snake
- Straw Loser: When you get right down to it, half of his purpose in the story is to suck at everything and make the Gandor family members look good.
- Unknown Rival: Ever since their fight, and especially since being fished out of the river by the Larvae, Dallas considers Firo to be his arch-nemesis and the root of all that is bad in the world. Firo, on the other hand, just considers him an annoying dick
- With Great Power Comes Great Asshattery: Though he doesn't go crazy, Dallas does turn his Jerkass behavior up to eleven once he realizes he can't be killed for it.
The Runorata Family and Associates
Bartolo Runorata
The Don of the Runorata Family.
- The Chessmaster
- The Don
- Even Evil Has Standards: Bartolo has designated the Martillo Family off-limits to his men because he is from the same town as Don Molsa Martillo.
- Immortality Seeker: His motive for seeking Dallas out.
- The Man Behind the Man: To Gustavo.
- You Have Failed Me...: In the anime, he executes Gustavo for this reason.
Gustavo Bagetta
- The Brute
- Death by Adaptation: In the anime, he is unceremoniously shot and killed by Bartolo Runorata. In the novels, Gustavo is beaten by Luck and stabbed in the neck with Luck's severed arm, but manages to survive… only to go to jail and get trounced by Ladd.
- Dumb Muscle
- Social Darwinist
- Spell My Name with an "S": Bagetta/Ragetta
- Unwitting Pawn
The Beriam family and associates
Manfred Beriam
Voiced by: Kazuhiro Nakata (JP), Bill Jenkins (EN)
A US Senator. His wife and daughter were passengers on the Flying Pussyfoot and were taken as hostages to force Manfred use his political power to free Huey from prison. He does not comply. In the anime, Beriam's main goal seems to be becoming immortal, for which purpose he and Don Runorata hope to find and experiment on Dallas. In the novels, he wants to destroy all immortals for reasons unknown, possibly in cooperation with the Nebula corporation.
- Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: In the anime Beriam seems very uncaring towards his family, even when they were safely rescued. In the novels he wonders why Rachel didn't like recieving his reward money. His wife calls him on it, saying that he should be happy to have his family back in one piece. Manfred actually thinks about it for a moment, and he does feel happy as he sees his daughter smiling.
- Blond Guys Are Evil
- Fantastic Racism: In the books, he hates all immortals for unknown reasons aside from being a proud human himself.
- The Stoic: Nothing that passes through his mind seems to move the muscles of his face.
- The Unfettered
- Villain with Good Publicity: A corrupt senator who is in cahoots with the mafia. In the anime, he shows no concern for his family's well-being.
Natalie Beriam
Voiced by: Miki Itou (JP), Amy Rosenthal (EN)
Manfred's wife and a passenger on the Flying Pussyfoot. When the train is hijacked, the Lemures take her and Mary hostage in the hopes of persuading the Senator to arrange Huey's release.
- Blue Eyes
- Damsel in Distress: Mother and daughter.
- Satellite Character: To Manfred, who already is quite the Flat Character himself.
Mary Beriam
Voiced by: Saori Goto (JP), Cherami Leigh (EN)
Manfred and Natalie's daughter. Taken hostage along with her mother.
- Blue Eyes
- Damsel in Distress: With her mother.
- Morality Pet: For Czes in the novel, where he decides to not hand her over to the white suits because he didn't want to betray a child like he was betrayed by Fermet.
- Satellite Character
Immortals and related characters
Szilard Quates
Voiced by: Kinyruu Arimoto (JP), R Bruce Elliott (EN)
One of the original immortals on the Advena Avis. He fights with Maiza over whether or not to share the secret of immortality with the world at large, and after Maiza and the others reject his plans, he murders several of them and escapes with half the formula for the immortality elixir. Since then, he's experimented to try and recreate the entire elixir. He's also dabbled in creating Homunculi, including his current servant, Ennis.
- Above Good and Evil: Would argue this in the name of science.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: (Way more dangerous then you'd think. Apparently eating all those people has made him much stronger.
- Big Bad: For the Rolling Bootlegs/1930's arc.
- Complete Monster: Definitely.
- Elderly Immortal: The only one among the 1711 immortals.
- Evil Old Folks: Lampshaded. Szilard mentions that he actively mistrusts anyone younger than himself. Ennis points out that this means pretty much everyone.
- Evil Plan: Driven to acquire the "Finished Product"/complete elixir. This is the cayalyst for everything in in the 1930 storyline.
- Eviler Than Thou: The terrified look on Dallas' face when Szilard devours one of his partners says it all.
- Feel No Pain: In the novels, he is stated to have alchemically modified his body so that he does not feel pain.
- For Science!: According to him, this is his motivation for everything he does, although in truth he's just as driven by straight power-madness and a personal grudge against Maiza.
- Ghost Memory: He probably has more ghost memories than actual legitimately acquired memories. The same can be said of Firo once he devours Szilard.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Szilard is killed when his creation, Ennis, teaches Firo (granted immortality by an elixir Szilard sponsored the creation of) the method of killing other immortals -- meaning that Szilard is destroyed by two of his own creations working together.
- All of which only happens after he gets run over by his own car.
- I Control My Minions Through...: fear and the promise of immortality
- Identical Grandson: His several-greats grandson in the 2001 novel looks quite a bit like him.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Technically speaking "consuming" immortals isn't quite cannibalism, but he has once commented that he enjoys the taste of spinal fluid.
- Immortality: Type 3.
- Implacable Man: "Maiza...why is that old guy still standing?"
- Said after Szilard gets hit with enough Tommygun ammo to reduce his surroundings to matchwood. He barely flinches.
- Mad Scientist: Originally he was a garden variety scientist, but then he started eating his fellow immortals.
- Meaningful Name: Possibly to Leó Szilárd, Hungarian physicist who patented the concept of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi.
- Omniscience: His goal, if the fact that he was researching "true" homunculi which would be omniscient at the price of being confined to a bottle is anything to go by.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Why does Szilard care that he hit Isaac and Miria with a car? Only because running over random pedestrians attracts attention, which when you're a mad immortal running a top-secret Elixir-brewing operation is the last thing you need.
- Rasputinian Death: Shot full of holes, hit by a car, stabbed in the back, set on fire, getting his arm sliced in half the long way, and then finally consumed by Firo.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Only one to actually seem old.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: To Maiza in 1930; also the closest he gets to a Motive Rant.
- Truly Single Parent: Ennis is the only the lastest servant he's created from himself.
- Villain Ball: Had you taken father lessons from Huey, then your creation wouldn't have revealed the method of killing you after all the abuse she's taken.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Give this man a means of advancing his knowledge by "eating" other people and he goes absolutely nuts.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness/You Have Failed Me...: Somewhat more justified[4] than most other frequent perpetrators of these in that he actually gains something from killing his subordinates.
- You Will Be Assimilated: He's spent the last two hundred years hunting down other members of the 1711 group so he can devour them and absorb everything they have. And he gets devoured by Firo after having fire burning on his head.
Ennis
Voiced by: Sanae Kobayashi (JP), Brina Palencia (EN)
Szilard's Homunculus and reluctant servant, only following his orders because he could kill her with a single thought should she ever refuse. Deeply troubled by what she is forced to do, she is touched by a brief encounter with Isaac and Miria and their kindness towards her. Now if only she can protect them from getting all caught up in this with her...
- Action Girlfriend: Before Firo met her, he was an ordinary gangster. After meeting her He's an immortal ganster with centuries worth of alchemic knowledge.
- Artificial Human
- Asexuality/Oblivious to Love: Much to Firo's dismay.
- She eventually reciprocates his feelings and they get married... fifty years later, though.
- The Atoner: Ennis blames herself for not being brave enough to stand up against Szilard. Her eventual retaliation against him for the sake of Isaac and Miria was a deliberate attempt at Redemption Equals Death. Luckily, Firo proved that that wouldn't be necessary.
- Battle Butler: A subversion. She appears to be spot-on example at first, but by the time she meets Isaac and Miria, it becomes very clear that her loyalty towards Szilard is purely out of fear.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: To Isaac and Miria. Their enthusiastic niceness to her during a chance meeting leads to her being willing to sacrifice her life to buy them time to escape from Szilard.
- Bifauxnen
- Blank Slate: She was "born" as one of these. She's generally grown out of it by the start of the series, primarily because Szilard was able to directly transfer any information to her as he wished (and she developed a conscience from that one guy she "devoured"), but she's still lacking in at least one department.
- Cool Big Sis: Ends up as one for Czeslaw Meyer after Isaac and Miria get it into their heads they should get her a little brother for a vacation souvenir. Turns out rather well, all things considering.
- Demoted to Extra: In the second half of the 2002 arc.
- Expy: YMMV quite heavily, but let's see. A pale-skinned artificial human created by a major antagonist (Who considers her replaceable at any time), who starts off as emotionless but slowly gains emotions over the course of the story, and who betrays him when his plan is about to come to fruition? Rei, is that you?
- The fact that they're both voiced by Brina Palencia doesn't help.
- Happily Married: to Firo.
- Heroes Want Redheads: Firo certainly does.
- Hot Chick in a Badass Suit
- Immortality: Type 3
- Innocent Cohabitation: With Firo, after the 1930 arc.
- Little Black Dress: Wears one when going aboard the Entrance in 2002.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: A variant. While she does betray her 'father' and fall for the Decoy protagonist, they're seperate events. She betrayed for the sake of Issac and Miria not the protagonist.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal
- Mysterious Waif: Starts out this way.
- Our Homunculi Are Different
- Redemption Equals Death: Or at least she intended it to, but Firo had better ideas.
- Sugar and Ice Personality: She's a kind and affection person, with a quiet outer coating.
- Ugly Guys Hot Daughter: Even though Ennis is an Artificial Human, she was still created from Szilard's own cells. Firo even comments that she's way too hot to be related to Szilard.
- Vague Age: The only real hint to her age, chronological or biological, is that she identifies Firo to be "her age, maybe younger" when they first meet. Given that disproportionately youthful looks are pretty much Firo's defining physical characteristic, this helps jack shit.
- What Is This Thing You Call Love?: It took her quite awhile to grasp the concept of romantic love.
- The Four Loves: Ennis understands and experiences the concept of love. However, she has a great deal of difficulty of comprehending the difference between different types of loves, particularly stroge and eros, and thus can't tell the difference between what she feels for Firo from what she feels for Isaac and Miria.
Chane Laforet
Voiced(?) by: Ryo Hirohashi (JP), Monica Rial (EN)
The mute daughter of Huey Laforet, with whom she shares a psychic connection. Ruthlessly loyal to her father, she is also a skilled fighter with daggers. Chane is uncomfortable with friendly relationships, but starts to warm up to Jacuzzi's offer of friendship and Claire's love proposals as time goes on.
- Badass Normal: An ordinary girl who can hold her own with people like Ladd and Graham.
- Battle Butler: For her father.
- Berserk Button: Even mentioning Huey's name wrong or claiming to know any of his secrets (such as his immortality) can press her buttons.
- Charm Point: According to Claire, it's the remembrance of the note she left for him, when she killed the White Suits, being a Cute Mute, and how she's an Emotionless Girl that makes Claire fall in love with her even more.
- Cute Mute: Claire thinks her inability to talk is completely hot.
- Emotionless Girl
- Engaging Conversation: With Claire. They become informally engaged after just two meetings -- and right after they try to kill each other, at that.
- Eyes of Gold
- "Friend or Idol?" Decision: Her greatest fear is that she'll be forced to choose between Claire and her loyalty to her father.
- Happily Married: To Claire.
- High Heel Face Turn
- Hot Amazon: Claire and Graham both appreciate her prowess with knives.
- Knife Nut
- Love Martyr: Towards her father. Huey doesn't even consider her human, but she'll still bend over backwards just to please him.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: As noted above, she's afraid of the 'betrayal' aspect of this trope. Otherwise she fits perfectly.
- Not So Stoic: Chane remains almost completely expressionless up until Claire shows up.
- Earlier on, she becomes very, very pissed off when Ladd insults Huey.
- Odd Friendship: With Miria, after Isaac is arrested in the Alice in Jails arc.
- Parental Abandonment: Chane's mother left her to be raised by Huey and practically skipped off without a care. The only resistance she put up was a complaint about the fact that Huey called her too clumsy to raise a child.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Claire has one sent to her as a gift. He even had it thoughtfully custom-made to include a holster for her knife.
- Sixth Ranger: Officialy joins Jacuzzi's gang after defecting from the Lemures.
- The Speechless
- Sugar and Ice Personality
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: After falling in with Nice, Jacuzzi, and co., she becomes a sort of girly girl to Nice's tomboy.
- Tranquil Fury: Her silence makes her attacks all the scarier.
- Tyke Bomb: Technically speaking, Huey didn't initially intend for her to be a living weapon. However, discovering that she had a natural inclination towards trying to make him happy gave him...ideas.
- Undying Loyalty: Towards her father. It seems to be a natural tendency of hers, as she develops a same sort of obsessive "protect at all costs" loyalty towards Jacuzzi's gang once she joins them.
- Unholy Matrimony: With Claire. They actually end up quite Happily Married.
- What Is This Thing You Call Love?: Chane has a good deal of difficulty understanding that relationships don't have to be utilitarian. When Claire proposes to her despite him having nothing tangible to gain from it, her mind nearly breaks.
- Woman in Black
- Woman in White: During Episode 15 and 16, Chane wears a white Pimped-Out Dress given to her by Claire, who wanted to express his love for her. He even had it custom-made to include a holster for her knife. D'aww...
Huey Laforet
Voiced by: Susumu Chiba (JP), Eric Vale (EN)
Chane's father, and considered by the other surviving Advena Avis passengers to be the creepiest one of their kind. Huey is a self-proclaimed man of science that doesn't let silly, intangible concepts like "ethics" or "sanity" get in the way of a good experiment. Currently, he's been imprisoned for acts of treason and terrorism against the United States. He's also the figurehead of a Cult known as the Lemures, who are convinced that Huey can give them the secret to immortality.
- Above Good and Evil: Everything is For Science!.
- Abusive Parents: Emotionally abusive towards his daughters, and physically too, if you count homunculi created by him as his children.
- Age-Appropriate Angst: In 1705, 15-year old Huey's angsty Nietzsche Wannabe-ism is pointed out by the narration to be an extremely teenaged line of thought.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Huey claims that his ultimate goal is to either create or become a demon like Ronnie.
- Big Bad: One of them, in the 1930s.
- Bishonen
- Body Horror: He escapes Alcatraz... in pieces.
- Break the Cutie: Huey was ten when his mother was arrested and tried for witchcraft. His mother's accusations, in turn, are what led to the trials that wiped out the entire village that Huey trusted.
- The Chessmaster
- Corruption by a Minor: He began the counterfeiting operation in Lotto Valentino before he turned fifteen.
- Cult: Has one dedicated to him.
- Dead Little Sister: Losing his mother to the witch hunts is what turned him into a Nietzsche Wannabe in his teenage years -- Monica's death in 1710 is what finally pushed him over the edge.
- Add to this the fact that rumor had it that Huey himself killed Monica, which Huey never took the trouble to correct.
- Dissonant Serenity
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: "It's a man...I think."
- The extent of Huey's androgyny is shown in The Children of Bottle. After not seeing Sylvie or Huey for centuries (and not realizing that Sylvie waited a few years before taking the Elixir of life), Elmer mistakes the former for the latter[5]. Huey does not get mistaken for a beautiful woman -- beautiful women get mistaken for him.
Elmer:You're Huey! Huey Laforet, aren't you! Why're you dressed like a woman?
Sylvie: I'm not!
Elmer: Eh, you're not? I'm wrong? I could've sworn that Huey was the only one on that boat who was this pretty...
- Even Evil Has Standards: Huey will not let any harm befall anything that is outside the designated parameters of his experiments. He also refuses to take hostages.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Huey does not look like a beautiful woman - beautiful women look like him
- Everyone Looks Sexier If French: Um...yeah....
- Eye Scream: Later in the novels, Firo takes one of his eyes. He inflicts this on Renée at the end of 1934.
- Eyes of Gold
- For Science!: Huey's excuse for everything.
- French Jerk
- Heterosexual Life Partners: With Elmer. According to Huey, Elmer's the only human being that he saw as something beyond "experimental guinea pig," and Elmer's been noted to be one of the only men in the world not thoroughly creeped the fuck out by Huey.
- Hot Dad: Huey looks pretty good for a 240-year old father of three.
- Identical Stranger: Fans have noticed that Kasuka Heiwajima (from a different series, but in the same 'verse) looks like a brown-eyed clone of Huey despite the fact that they're not even the same ethnicity, much less related. Volume 8 of Durarara confirms that people in-universe get the same impression, as Saki notes Huey's strangely identical grandson looks almost a hell of a lot like a younger version of the Japanese model/actor in question. And considering by the usual implication this 'verse places on people who look like Huey Laforet...
- Immortality: Type 3
- It's All About Me: Huey's gone on record to say that the only person he even considers human besides himself is Elmer C. Albatross. Everyone else are prospective "raw materials."
- Light Is Not Good: When Chic's brother Tack encountered him, he took him to be an angel due to his looks and ethereal appearance. Dear lord, was he wrong...
- Locked Out of the Loop: For most of 1705, Huey doesn't realize that nearly every named character knows about his counterfeiting operation. He also doesn't know the true identity of the Mask Maker until the very end.
- Mad Scientist
- Manipulative Bastard: Elmer is probably the one person exempt from his Manipulative Bastardry.
- Nietzsche Wannabe: As a teenager. He grew out of it.
- Odd Friendship: With Elmer.
- Offing the Offspring: He's considering getting rid of Leeza, just to see how Hilton will react to losing her favorite vessel and her blood relation to daddy.
- Orange and Blue Morality: In Huey's book, "good" is defined as "whatever produces the most intellectually stimulating result."
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old
- Renaissance Man: Huey's field of research doesn't just extend to alchemical science, but social science as well. His current experiment is to see what kind of impact an immortal could make on the country.
- Smug Snake: He'd probably be a little more magnificent if he weren't so dang full of himself.
- Start of Darkness: Monica's death in 1710.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Huey has several children/grandchildren/great^x grandchildren over the course of the various Light Novels. They're pretty easy to pick out too, as they all look almost exactly like him - male or female. The only known exceptions are Luchino, who got all his looks from the Campanella family side; and Claudia, who took all her looks from her great-grandfather Felix.
- Both Aging and Elmer note that Luchino actually does have some noticeable resemblance to Huey. Luchino finds this a bit ridiculous, as the two are three hundred years removed.
- Teen Genius: In 1705.
- The Unfettered
- Unholy Matrimony: With Monica, sometime after 1705.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The first line in the 1705 novel is a quote from his mother talking about how innocent he was. Now compare that to a few hundred years later...
- Weak but Skilled: Huey's not particularly strong, but his lack of mercy and hesitation makes him a dangerous fighter nonetheless.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Unlike most examples, however, he encourages this sort of behavior.
Goose
Leader of the Lemures and one of Huey's cohorts.
- Affably Evil: He fancies himself as this, but he's really not.
- Complete Monster: Has less standards and character than even Huey!
- Cult: The Lemures, which he leads.
- The Dragon: To Huey, in the grand scheme of things.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: He wields a flamethrower at the climax.
- Jerkass
- Karmic Death: He's killed when he's thrown off the train and his flamethrower explodes.
- Kick the Dog: He enjoys telling Mrs. Beriam his plan, which involves murdering her daughter, a little too much.
- Lack of Empathy
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Twice! Once when he claims he's "too much of a gentleman" to have his men strip search Nice, giving her the perfect opportunity to attack them with hidden explosives. Then when he fights Jacuzzi with a flamethrower...while Jacuzzi's desperately trying to light Nice's cherry bomb.
- Satellite Character: To Huey and Chane.
- Smug Snake: Just listen to his speech to Mrs. Beriam. It can easily be translated to, "I'm the greatest terrorist on Earth and anyone who tries to stop me is an idiot!"
- So You Want to Live Forever: He serves Huey in the hope that he will be rewarded with immortality. Huey and Chane believe this to be true of all the Lemures.
- The Stoic
- The Starscream: Chane and Huey assume him to be this; although he does not specifically plan to bring about Huey's downfall, Huey knows that he would if said downfall would enable him to become immortal himself.
- Straw Hypocrite: He isn't really devoted to Huey. He just wants immortality.
- He also claims to be "too much of a gentleman" to let his men search a woman. And yet, he shows no remorse at the possibility of killing one. Or a little girl, even.
- Villainous Breakdown: Has an epic one when he's being beaten down by Jacuzzi.
- Would Hurt a Child: He plans to murder the senator's daughter and leave her body on the side of the railroad as a terrorist threat against Senator Beriam.
Elmer C. Albatross
Voiced by: Shintarou Oohata (JP), John Burgmeier (EN)
An old friend of Huey's, and a very weird one at that. A constantly cheerful British man that, rather than bringing happiness to people, seems to unnerve or disturb them. Most believe that there's a seriously messed up mind behind that omnipresent smile of his, and chances are that they're right...
- Adorkable: Especially as a gangly teenager in the 1710 arc.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Elmer openly proclaims that he finds no meaning or purpose in life, but uses this perspective as a reason to indiscriminately spread happiness throughout the world.
- Covered with Scars: From his childhood, when he was routinely tortured by the Cult into which he was born.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Elmer was born into a Cult in which his only purpose of existence was to suffer. He wasn't rescued until he turned ten.
- Eyes Always Shut: He actually has Blue Eyes when they're occasionally unshut, though.
- Failed His Economics Classes: States that he originally began studying alchemy in order to create enough gold to go around for everyone and bring happiness to people by eliminating poverty. He gave up after realizing that the economy does not work that way.
- For Happiness: His motto for living.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: With Huey.
- Horrible Judge of Character: He's best friends with Huey, people.
- Not to mention thinking Szilard is redeemable.
- Identity Impersonator: For Monica and the Mask Maker.
- Keet
- Living Lie Detector: A variation in that he can see through fake smiles.
- The Matchmaker: In 1705, he tries to get Huey and Monica together.
- The Messiah: In some ways he's a subversion, as his perpetually upbeat nature often disturbs or angers people more than it cheers them up.
- Played straight and subverted simultaneously with Czeslaw Meyer. Sure his offbeat nature particularly irks him, but at the same time Elmer makes a serious case of demonstrating the Power of Friendship and Trust.
- Morality Chain: To Huey, he once disclosed to Chane the only reason he isn't conducting experiments in mass and screwing with other people's lives in general is because: "Elmer would be sad".
- Mysterious Middle Initial
- New Transfer Student: He joins Huey and Monica's alchemy class early on in 1705.
- The Nondescript: It's noted that his only distinguishing physical feature is that he's constantly smiling.
- Odd Friendship: Somehow befriended Esperança pre-series.
- Not to mention his heterosexual life partnership with Huey.
- Perpetual Smiler
- The Pollyanna: Subverted, as his "smile and look on the bright side of life" attitude sometimes comes off to others as incredibly oblivious, unhelpful and insensitive at times: for example, expecting Sylvie to cheer up and laugh with him just after she discovered her fiance was killed and was nearly murdered herself.
- Secret Keeper: Elmer finds out the Mask Maker's true identity within days of coming to Lotto Valentino, and decides to help her win Huey over.
- Stepford Smiler: Though nobody's quite sure if he's an Empty Shell or Cute and Psycho under the mask.
- The light novels reveal that he's neither, though the former isn't far off.
- Stupid Good: Let Szilard live because you want to try to convince him to atone for his acts? Seriously?
- Totalitarian Utilitarian: Hasn't quite gone this far in action, he certainly has the mentality for it
Elmer: I'd sell the souls of all humanity to the devil if I thought it'd get us a happy ending.
Sylvie Lumiere
Voiced by: Ayahi Takagaki (JP), Leah Clark (EN)
The fiancee of Gretto and one of the Advena Avis passengers. In the 1930s she makes her living as a singer; in the 21st century she joins Maiza on his quest to reunite the survivors of the Advena Avis incident.
- Best Served Cold: She drank the elixir for the sole and express purpose of devouring Szilard. She let herself age a little before drinking so that he would not recognize her when she tracked him down.
- Bob Haircut: Sports one in her 1930's look.
- Damsel in Distress: Once in 2001, courtesy of Felt, and once again in 2002 by SAMPLE and Bride.
- Curtains Match the Window
- Even the Girls Want Her: Sylvie attracts quite a bit of attention on the Exit, from men and women alike.
- Glamorous Wartime Singer
- Gray Eyes
- Her Heart Will Go On: Following the death of her fiance Gretto.
- Meganekko: Before she changed her look.
- She's All Grown Up: Sylvie waited a while until she drank the elixir so that she could kill Szilard while unrecognized by him.
- Shrinking Violet
- White-Haired Pretty Girl: Sylvie is the only character keeping this series off the "Probable" list on You Gotta Have Blue Hair.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: She says that this was her goal in becoming an alchemist and seeking eternal life. Which was true until 1711, at which point her goal in life became revenge for her murdered fiance.
Gred/Gretto Avaro
Voiced by: Daisuke Namikawa (JP), Jason Liebrecht (EN)
The younger brother of Maiza and the fiance of Sylvie.
- Bishonen: Take a look at his picture. Sylvie was one lucky girl.
- Blue Blood
- Curtains Match the Window
- Dead Little Brother: To Maiza.
- Death by Origin Story
- The Lost Lenore: To Sylvie; the goal of avenging his death was the only thing keeping her going for nearly 300 years.
- Posthumous Character
- Sacrificial Lamb: Why did Maiza have to bestow information upon you when you had an ambitious fiend like Szilard on your ship
- Spell My Name with an "S": Gretto/Gret/Gred/Gerd
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Maiza describes him as "pure of heart"; naturally no one that pure can survive Szilard's rampage.
- We Hardly Knew Ye
Czeslaw Meyer
Voiced by: Akemi Kanda (JP), Maxey Whitehead (EN)
The youngest passenger to be made immortal on the Advena Avis. He was taken in by a fellow immortal, Fermet, who experimented on him, testing the limits of their immortality until Czeslaw finally snapped and ate him. Despite his cynical, tough exterior, Czes is still struggling to trust anyone and constantly fears that other immortals are going to kill him.
- And I Must Scream: He was strapped down for those 'experiments'.
- Anti-Villain: All his actions were against perceived threats. Ironically, he never meets Szilard, perhaps the only immortal who would eat him.
- Berserk Button: A rather serious case. Because other immortals are the only thing that can truly kill him, Czes tends to go completely nuts around them. Especially if any try to touch him with their right hand.
- Blessed with Suck: You can argue the whole immortality before puberty thing as this.
- Break the Cutie: One hundred years of torture by his 'caretaker' Fermet.
- Crazy Survivalist: Thanks to 200+ years of bad experience, Czeslaw tends to go to extremes to preserve his own safety.
- Creepy Child: Over two hundred years of constant, barbaric torture enacted by a man he trusted has had less than a positive impact on him. The result is a paranoid survivalist mentality that ranges from callous (ditching Mary because he thought she would get in the way) to flat out murderous (bargaining with Ladd to kill everyone in his passenger car to weed out the other immortal on the train).
- Cry Cute: His meeting with Issac and Miria and reunion with Maiza.
- Deadpan Snarker: Frequently after the Flying Pussyfoot incident.
- Deliberately Cute Child: He does this both to throw people off of his true nature and to get what he wants.
- Enfant Terrible: Prior Character Development and Redemption Equals Life
- Ghost Memory: Formerly belonging to Fermet.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Or, considering those last 200 years of living hell, maybe not.
- Harmful to Minors: Czeslaw was not only at the receiving end of two-hundred years of torture, but he escapes by consuming Fermet and assuming all of past knowledge, meaning he now has memories of gleefully torturing himself running around in his head. No wonder he's so messed up...
- Hide Your Children: Brutally subverted with poor Czes-kun.
- Mouthy Kid: Even when not in Crazy Survivalist mode is often this.
- Never Be Hurt Again: His motivation for hunting down and eating other immortals before they can do the same to him, after being cruelly tortured by Fermet for years.
- Out of the Inferno: In 2001, he throws himself into a fireplace to burn off some ropes that were binding him. See the series CMOA page.
- The Power of Trust: A part of Throw the Dog a Bone involves Czes learning this when Issac and Miria rescue him during the Flying Pussyfoot Massacre.
- The novels (Children of Bottle specifically) go further with this trope with Elmer forcing Czes's right hand on his head as a way to show that trust is a virtue. This turns into a major CMOH.
- Puppy Love: He still often thinks fondly about his time spent with Mary, decades after the Flying Pussyfoot. Which is funny, since he left her in a closet.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old
- Self-Made Orphan: see the other tropes associated with this character?
- Taking the Bullet: For Claudia at the end of 2002.
- The Dog Bites Back: How Czes brought about Fermet's well-deserved demise.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After the absolute shitstorm that was the Flying Pussyfoot massacre, Czeslaw finally gets something resembling a real, functional family when Isaac and Miria invite him to join the group as Ennis's "little brother".
- Walking the Earth: With Maiza between 1970 and 2002.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Being terrified of another immortal "devouring" you? Understandable. Making a deal with Ladd Russo to kill everyone on the passenger car so you can find out who you need to get rid of? Not cool, Czez. The Rail Tracer calls him out on this, big time.
Fermet Full name: Lebreau Fermet Viralesque
Voiced by: Ken Narita (JP), Robert McCollum (EN)
One of the original alchemists aboard the Advena Avis who sought immortality. After the incident with Szilard Quates, he lives with his young charge, Czeslaw Meyer, and spends his immortality torturing the boy in the most gruesome ways.
In the novels, Fermet somehow managed to survive being devoured by Czes, and is revealed to be the Big Bad.
- Abusive Parent: The majority of his characterization in the anime.
- The All-Concealing "I": The opening color pages of the 1705 novel is a series of questions posed to multiple characters between 1700 and 2002. At the end of the color pages, the questioner is revealed to be Fermet, hinting at his mysterious return from death.
- Back from the Dead: In the 2002 novel it apparently turns out that Fermet came back from getting eaten by Czes, got eaten by an alchemist who was later eaten by Szilard, came back from that, and then proceeded to become one of the major antagonists of the novel.
- Big Bad: According to Word of God
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When Czes was orphaned in 1705, Begg commented that Fermet was too nice to be able to raise a child.
- Blinding Bangs
- Complete Monster
- Cult: A member of the one that tortured Elmer.
- Diabolus Ex Machina: Fermet intentionally sets one up for the 1710 arc.
- Double Agent: He's working with all three of the main factions involved in the 2002 hijacking case--as Life of the Mask Makers, Angelo's ally the Demolisher, and Viralesque of SAMPLE.
- Dramatic Unmask: At the end of 2002, Angelo takes off Life's goggles and discovers that he is actually the Demolisher.
- For the Evulz: Fermet caused most of the 2002 incident, which resulted in mutiple deaths and would have sunk two cruise ships if the plan had been successful, just so he could torment Czes.
- Break the Cutie: Fermet's stated favorite hobby. He finds "toys" like Czes to play with and torment.
- For Science!: Subverted. He makes this claim as he uses torture to test the limits of immortality. After Czes gets back at him, his Ghost Memory reflects that he just did all that crap for his own amusement.
- Hannibal Lecture: Gives one to Luchino before he escapes.
- Hidden Eyes
- Hijacked By Fermet: In the later novels it's revealed that with the exception of Szilard's actions, Fermet's responsible for practically everything bad that's happened to the immortals. Consider how much trouble Huey alone is responsible for, and recall that Fermet is the one who caused Huey's big Start of Darkness in 1710.
- Loophole Abuse: Gets past the "no false names" clause by going by parts of his full name. Thus, he's "Fermet" to the 1711 immortals, while other times he goes by "Lebreau" or "Viralesque".
- Mad Scientist
- Meaningful Name: Possibly to Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist who patented the concept of a nuclear reactor with Leó Szilárd.
- "Viralesque," was it?
- Multiple Aliases One Character: Somehow, despite the "no false names" rule. In addition to the names derived from his full name "Lebreau Fermet Viralesque", he is also "Life" from the Businessmen who hijack the cruise ships, and the "Demolisher" who is working with Angelo.
- Offing the Offspring: Repeatedly. For upwards of 200 years.
- Promotion to Parent: When his alchemy teacher died in 1705, Fermet took in his teacher's orphaned grandson Czes.
- Satellite Character: He's only significant because of how miserable he made Czes; otherwise he has barely any characterization at all.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Later in the novels, he turns out to be the Big Bad.
- Torture Technician: We've only gotten bits and pieces of what was done from Czeslaw. Considering the immortality thing, he might be the best example of this in a show filled with this trope.
The Daily Days bunch
The Daily Days
The President voiced by: Show Hayami (JP), Cole Brown (EN)
An information agency in Chinatown, hiding behind a newspaper business.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: The boss of the Daily Days is never seen. The desk he sits behind is covered in so much paperwork and money that it completely obscures him.
- Nicholas and Elean actually freak out a bit when the guy who eats the sugarcubes goes behind the paperwork (thus seeing the President) and gives him some sugarcubes.
- Chinese Laborer: There are quite a few Chinese men working in the offices, mostly because of its proximity to New York's Chinatown.
- Crazy Prepared: The front office is designed with trench warfare in mind, and every employee has a loaded gun under their desk.
Gustav St. Germain
Voiced by: Norio Wakamoto (JP), Kent Williams (EN)
The Vice President of the Daily Days. He is a well-spoken man who prefers to be on the scenes of the incidents he covers.
- Badass Bookworm: Managed to fight off Graham.
- Historical Domain Character: There was a man known as Count of St. Germain who lived in medieval times. He was rumored to be, amongst other things, immortal. This fact is even mentioned in one of the novels.
- There are multiple famous, historical St. Germains, but the one who made claims of immortality lived in the 18th century.
- High-Class Glass
- Improvised Weapon: Once successfully beat down a group of robbers with a newspaper.
- Knowledge Broker
- Large Ham: This should come as no surprise since he's played by Norio Wakamoto himself.
- Hell, they give him a whole narration track on the soundtrack all to himself to ham all over, it's beautiful.
- Props to Kent Williams for a more subtle, yet hammy, job.
- Meta Guy: With his assistant Carol.
- One-Scene Wonder: In the anime.
- Photographic Memory
Carol
Voiced by: Chiwa Saito (JP), Kristin Sutton (EN)
Gustav St. Germain's assistant. She is an inexperienced young photographer working at the Daily Days who is prone to bouts of anxiety when facing authority figures. In 1934, she befriends Rail and Frank, but is taken hostage by the Russo Family.
- Cowardly Sidekick
- Kid Sidekick
- Lovable Coward
- Meta Girl: In the first episode of the anime.
- Naive Newcomer: To the entire information business.
- The Team Normal: Is not particularly Badass, nor does she have special skills as a member of the Daily Days.
Rachel
Voiced by: Shizuka Ito (JP), Trina Nishimura (EN)
One of the informants for the Daily Days. Has a habit of hitching a ride on trains, since her father, a train conductor who was screwed over by the train companies, taught her a contradictory love for trains and hatred for the train companies.
- Action Survivor: All of Rachel's skills are intended for laying low and getting out of the fray.
- Big Damn Heroes: In spite of the above, Rachel ends up being responsible for more rescues than anyone else in the show.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Rachel's first appearance is during the three-way cabin hold-up, where she slips out unnoticed and goes ignored for about an episode or two. She becomes surprisingly important, both in the events of the Flying Pussyfoot itself and in relaying the story later.
- Curtains Match the Window
- Densha Otaku: Which what leads her to being the Big Damn Hero.
- Eyes of Gold
- Femme Fatalons: Rachel is noted in the books to have long, blade-like fingernails -- some of which are even serrated. She files them like this just to make sure she always has something sharp on hand.
- Heroic Bystander: Railway stowaway turned Big Damn Hero.
- Knowledge Broker
- Red Herring: 1931- The Grand Punk Station: Local Episode presents Rachel in a way that heavily implied she was Claire Stanfield, the assassin aboard the Flying Pussyfoot that the Gandors were bringing in. This charade goes on until the very last few pages of the book, when Ennis refers to "Miss Claire", and Firo realizes he forgot to mention something important.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: As evidenced in the image above and here, Rachel knows her fashion out of the average work clothes. In the novels, she got rid of said work clothes as soon as she got off the train.
- Odd Friendship: with Claire, the novels [6] make it clear that Rachel and Claire eventually became good friends, case in point she cleaned up twice to meet him; to settle it the man himself states that concerning female relatives and aquantaces, Rachel is second only to Chane, for obvious reasons.
- Only One Name: She probably has a last name, unlike Ennis, but damned if we know what it is.
- Only Sane Man: On the Flying Pussyfoot. Claire certainly thinks so -- he even asks her for relationship advice!
- Tsurime Eyes
Nicholas Wayne
Voiced by: Tohru Furusawa (JP), Christopher Bevins (EN)
Another of the Daily Days informants, usually working at the front desk. Has a tempestuous relationship with Rachel. Nicholas is responsible for leaving the Daily Days well-protected (read: heavily armed), a remnant of his days in military intelligence. He also has a bit of a mercenary streak, and is willing to sell or buy information from anyone.
- Cheshire Cat Grin
- Composite Character: The anime version of Nicholas is a composite of two characters from the Light Novels. Nicholas in the novels is a less morally dubious character; the other character, Henry, is the one who gets into trouble with Claire for trying to use Eve Genoard as a pawn.
- Knowledge Broker
- Manipulative Bastard: When people come to him for information, they usually end up giving him information.
- Oh Crap: It seems the only way for Nicholas to learn not to manipulate The Ingenue Eve Genoard from getting into dangerous situations anymore was from a serious "persuasion" by our favorite Sociopathic Hero, Claire Stanfield. Nicholas should be grateful that he didn't lose any limbs or even his life.
- Poisonous Friend: Not exactly friendly to his coworkers (Rd: Rachel) nor his clients.
- Running Gag: Nicolas frequently mentions Rachel's habit of getting a free ride on trains, much to the President's disapproval.
- Those Two Guys: With Elean.
- Tohru Furuya
Elean Duga
Voiced by: Taiten Kusunoki (JP), Daniel Drumm (EN)
Works the front desk at the Daily Days along with Nicholas. However, he shows a bit more compassion than Nicholas, especially to Eve Genoard. He's also the editor of the Chinese edition of the Daily Days.
- Composite Character: Similarly to Nicholas, but to a lesser degree. Part of Elean's role in the anime was carried over from Roy Maddock from the Light Novels.
- Cool Shades
- Knowledge Broker
- Those Two Guys: With Nicholas.
- Token Minority: While he's certainly not the only non-white guy in the series, or even the only black person, he definitely is the only black guy at the Daily Days.
- Back to Baccano!
- ↑ by knocking over their domino setup too early. It's Serious Business, people
- ↑ AAAAGH! Firo, you cretin! You ignoramus! You empty-headed, absolutely unworldly peasant!
- ↑ まあいい/maa ii in Japanese
- ↑ rationally, not morally
- ↑ Although he adds a "Just Joking" Justification after the whole bit
- ↑ Another Junk Railroad in particular