Characters: Gunslinger Girl

Characters: Gunslinger Girl

This is a work in progress; needs WikiMagic. Pictures from the first series would be much appreciated.

Henrietta

• Berserk Button: When a terrorist starts hitting Jose this creates a subconscious reminder of her own trauma — Henrietta responds by beating the man to death with her violin case then killing every terrorist in sight, despite direct orders from Jose not to act until they'd spotted their target.
• Body Count Competition: Henrietta in a combination of Creepy Child and Crowning Moment Of Funny.
  ''I know I only killed four people this month...but last month I killed at least ten! That's more than Triela even!"
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Henrietta has a face dip whenever her handler Jose pays attention to someone other than herself.
  • A significant representative scene from the first series of the anime: Marco is supervising Henrietta and Angelica on the shooting range. Jose arrives - but does not immediately speak to Henrietta, instead greeting Marco and complimenting Angelica on her improving accuracy. Henrietta watches the conversation - and praise - with a silent scowl, and then starts deliberately throwing off her aim to falsely suggest that her own technique is poor. She thus gets rewarded with private tuition with Jose all afternoon!
• Cultured Warrior: The violin case she carries sometimes actually does have a violin in it, shockingly enough.
• Emotionless Girl: Inflicted on Henrietta at a later stage when she is reconditioned to take on the late Beatrice's role as a bomb-sniffer following the battle in St. Mark's Campanile. The process 'resets her to factory settings', so to speak, wiping her memories and reducing her to a robotic personality.
• Laser Guided Amnesia: cf. Emotionless Girl above. After being reconditioned she can recognise a make of pistol, but not her sister-cyborgs.
• Meaningful Name: Henrietta's name is derived from Enrica, her handler's Dead Little Sister. cf. Replacement Goldfish below.
• Naive Newcomer
• Neural Implanting: Alongside the Emotionless Girl above, Henrietta has new skills programmed into her.
• Precocious Crush: Oh yes.
• Replacement Goldfish: For Jean and Jose's dead sister, Enrica. At least, until the events described above.
• Through His Stomach: Henrietta cooks for the others during the Elsa investigation, with the help of Elenora's magical notebook. Hilariously subverted when Fermi says later that like all kids she can't cook worth a damn.
• Yandere: She adores her handler, and his generous treatment of her. She cannot abide a world where Jose has no affection for her... and would destroy them both rather than endure it.
  • Must be part of why Jose finds it increasingly difficult to placate her affections, at least until he re-conditions her.

Rico

• Angst What Angst: Most cyborgs have their memories or their pre-Agency lives erased in order to remove the pain of past traumas (or make them easier to control, if you're cynical). Rico is unique in that she has full recollection of her time before she was given over to the Agency - which was not in itself a happy experience, with years crippled by birth defects and beset by quarreling parents - and is not at all troubled by years wasted in a hospital bed or being possessed by the Agency.
• Bad Dreams: For all of her bouncy demeanor, Rico has a paralyzing, mortal terror of losing the gift of movement that the Agency has given her, and has nightmares about it.
• Flanderization: In fanfiction, Rico's Plucky Girl characteristics tend to be exaggerated, often making her an outright ditz.
• Friendly Sniper
• Gender Blender Name
• Ill Girl: Before the Agency took custody of her, she was a fairly extreme example.
• Meaningful Name: Rico is speculated to be named after the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organisations Act in U.S. anti-mafia legislation. Closer to home, it is also derived from Enrica, her handler's Dead Little Sister.
• Plucky Girl: apparently guileless, Rico has a bright, sunny, genial and bubbly disposition that nothing can seem to dull. Arguably The Pollyanna given that she has a harsh handler, but unlike the classic Pollyanna the entire universe is not conspiring to make Rico's life a misery, and she enjoys friends and many benefits in her Agency life, too.
• Shorttank: while Rico's personality is well away from that of a tomboy (cf. Plucky Girl above), neither can she be said to be especially feminine. She has a boy's name, a permanent cropped haircut, and a wardrobe consisting entirely of sweatshirts, jerseys and trousers.
  • This is really a reflection of her handler, who treats Rico in a utilitarian way.
• Slasher Smile: Rico seems to enjoy the prospect of torturing a Padania suspect.

Triela

• Antagonist In Mourning: Although most likely never taught the philosophical and spiritual side of Martial Arts in her training, Triela solemnly and sadly returned Pinocchio's treasured key-ring to him after slaying him in single combat, paying her final respects to a fellow warrior.
• Bayonet Ya
• But Not Too Foreign: Mimi asks Triela if she's part-Japanese.
• Blood Knight: Increasingly as she's feeling her death coming close, and to the distress of Hilshire who wants her to live as long as possible.
  • Triela says that the cyborgs were created to fight, but she fights to show she is alive.
• Conveniently An Orphan: Convenient for the Agency anyway, having a girl with no past dropped off by a couple of criminals who can't afford to complain when she's turned into a cyborg killer.
• Cool Big Sis: Triela is described as a 'mother hen' to the other cyborgs by her English voice actress, Caitlin Glass.
• Dark Skinned Blond: And it adds to the mysteriousness of her origins. She is, however, decidedly non-ditzy, breaking type a little.
  • Triela originates from Tunisia, lending greater support to mixed ethnicity.
• Dressed To Kill: Hilshire starts dressing Triela in suits once he starts thinking of her as his police partner.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: While Henrietta is ostensibly the focus character and the Henrietta-Guiseppe-Jean-MemoryOfEnrica plotline is the main narrative thrust of the work, fans at large have noticed over the years that the emotional impact, narrative depth, and generalized awesomeness of the series tends to get turned up to 11 any time Triela is involved in a scene or plotline.
  • Worth noting, Triela is the first of the girls we see "on the job".
• Eye Scream: Gets her right eye punctured with a car key by Pinocchio in the final episode of Il Teatrino. Does it stop her from killing him? Hell no. And she gets better in the same episode.
• Fallen Princess: Triela, though in her case she's pulled herself up from even further down. Most of the adults at the agency call her "the princess", half in jest half in respect. The title of her image song is "Brown Snow White", which is probably not entirely about her skin, or her first seven bears.
• Fluffy The Terrible: When Triela was learning hand-to-hand fighting with the GIS, she picked up a nickname. What did the Special Forces call the little killing machine? Lepretto (roughly "bunny") after a child's doll that shares her Twin Tails.
  • Leading to a Crowning Moment of Cuteness when Triela runs into those GIS troopers the following year — they immediately start rubbing her "bunny ears" for luck. Cue Luminescent Blush.
• Girlish Pigtails: Interesting because on duty she is always Dressed To Kill. Likely a reference to her Tsundere nature, as such characters tend to have Twin Tails.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Triela owns a number of bears, but these are an austere ornamental collection rather than a soft pile of fuzzy teddies to cuddle. The severe names she gives them (after Roman Emperors) is remarked on by other characters.
  • She's shown cuddling and dressing them up, but only after she realized that the bears were in fact signs of Hilshire's affection for her, not just something given to shut her up at Christmas.
• Hates Being Touched: Triela pulls away from any attempt by Hilshire to comfort her (a noticeable exception is the Cool Down Hug scene at the end of Teatrino). After theevents of "Returning to the Birdcage" Hilshire is surprised that his cyborg is acting a lot more friendly.
• Heroic BSOD: After losing to Pinocchio in hand-to-hand combat, especially since she was the one who pressured Hilshire into charging in in the first place.
  • Also when Hilshire goes on a mission without Triela and gets wounded in the process; Triela flees in tears like a spurned lover — an act contrary to her conditioning that causes Triela to have withdrawal symptoms (unfortunately she's left her medicine with Hilshire).
• I Just Want My Beloved To Be Happy: After discovering Hilshire only joined the Agency to protect her, Triela decides to run away so he'll have a chance for a normal life.She barely makes it out the door before rushing back inside to announce she's going to stay with him till she dies, though Hilshire doesn't hear this because he'sunconscious at the time.
• I Just Want To Be Normal: Inverted. Triela is fully accepting of her role as a cyborg warrior, and resists Hilshire's attempts to expose her to 'normal' life or discuss What Might Have Been.
• The Lancer: Having received minimal conditioning or interaction from Hilshire, Triela is the most independent and outspoken of the girls, and directly disobeys her handler when she lets Mario Bossi go so he can see his daughter. Ironically this causes Hilshire (who secretly witnessed this) to start seeing her as his partner as opposed to a cyborg killer or a little girl — neither of whom he knows how to relate to.
  • Even better, when she calls the detectives investigating Elsa's death to tell them that Henrietta and Jose have suddenly gone off to Sicily. "Oh, and this phone is probably bugged."
• Meaningful Name: Triela is named after the city of Trier in the German wine-making region of the Mosel Valley, where her handler Hilshire originates from.
• Mind Game Ship: Triela worries constantly over whether her feelings for her handler are real, or merely the result of her conditioning. The events of "Returning to the Birdcage" appear to have resolved this question once and for all — they're real.
• Snuff Film: Triela was tortured for one of these in Amsterdam before being rescued by Hilshire; he brought her to the Agency to save her life, only for them to turn Triela into a brainwashed cyborg instead.
• Taking The Bullet: Does the literal version for Roberta during vol 7 of the manga. Later she takes a smoke grenade to the head while shielding Beatrice. She survives both, as does Roberta (though still wounded). Beatrice however...
• Tall Dark And Snarky: With her fellow cyborgs, it's friendly teasing. With Hilshire it can get pretty cutting. With other (non-handler) adults, it's on a whole other level.
• Teen Genius: Not as widely read or philosophical as her roommate Claes. She still has learned a LOT of history, writes startlingly good essays, and speaks at least three languages well enough to translate. In addition to lock-picking, combat medicine etc...
• Tsundere: Her conditioning inhibits the more extreme behaviours of this trope, but her Twin Tails and hot/cold interaction with Hilshire are definitely drawn from it.
• Waif Fu: In addition to the usual programmed skills, Triela is given extra training in hand-to-hand with the GIS.

Claes

• Call To Agriculture: She no longer fights (unless strictly necessary, like when she was used as a Trojan Prisoner), so Claes has a lot more free time than the other cyborgs - she likes to spend her time planting vegetables.
• Cultured Warrior: She inherited a library from her former handler and has a bookish air.
• Dont You Dare Pity Me: Claes is restricted to the compound, has no handler to lean on, and is used for brutal experiments by the Agency, but won't tolerate sympathy from the other girls (or tolerate them angsting over their own situation).
• The Glasses Come Off: Literally! Her former handler instructed her to be calm and composed while wearing her glasses, so she has to actually remove her glasses in order to remove the mental block and let her fight.
• Meganekko: Her glasses are sort of a memento of her handler, who she can't remember.
• Punch Clock Hero: Prior to the death of her handler, Claes compartmentalized her life thoroughly — fighting for the Agency and leisure time spent with her handler were hermetically sealed from one another and she would never let the aspects of one intrude in on the other.
• Super Prototype: After Raballo's death makes her unsuitable for normal combat operations, Claes literally becomes the Technology Department's test bed, outfitted with and testing each new iteration of cybernetics.
• Tested On Humans: Claes kills two subway hoodlums as part of her training. When her handler dies she becomes useless for field work, so she's used for brutal experiments to determine the limits of her cyborg body.
• Trauma Induced Amnesia: Claes goes catatonic after learning of her handler's death and loses memory of him, although it's uncertain whether that is because of her 'systems failure' or if the Agency re-conditioned her to make her operable again.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: How many twelve year-old girls do you know with an advanced knowledge of Balzac? She also carries herself primly.

Angelica

• Apologises A Lot
• Big Friendly Dog: Before being run down by her father and transformed into Angelica, Angelina's only friend was her amiable dog Perro.
• Dojikko: Trips often enough in missions and in training, likely due to her not adjusting well to her implants or losing control over her enhanced body.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She is mortally wounded shielding her handler from a bomb blast.
• Ill Girl: Gets injured in the anime and takes the brunt of a large explosion in the manga, she never fully recovers from either. Much is also made of her steadily decline from conditioning poisoning before these events.
  • They can always put her body back together, the drugs required are slowly destroying her mind.
• Loss Of Identity: Occurs in the terminal stages of conditioning poisoning.
• Parental Abandonment: Taken to the extreme with Angelica, whose father actually ran her down in an attempt to cash in on her hefty life insurance money.
• Parental Neglect: Angelica's handler, Marco, is initially very close to his cyborg. However, he grows increasingly distant and resentful as conditioning problems advance and he considers that the little girl he was introduced to has already died.
• The Woobie: As a consequence of Ill Girl above, Angelica excites a great deal of sympathy from many readers - to the extent that many were actually dissatisfied with her appearance in Il Teatrino. Although Angelica was alive at the equivalent point in the manga, the first series of the anime ended with her implied death and many considered her reintroduction to have spoiled a beautiful tragedy.

Petrushka

• Anguished Declaration Of Love: Happens literally — Alessandro is convinced her declarations of love are simply a result of her conditioning. To prove otherwise Petrushka deliberately insults him, an act that makes her physically ill.
• Anime Anatomy: When the character is introduced, she is naked underneath a sheet in a hospital recovery room; when Alessandro removes it, the nipples are airbrushed out.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Well she did want to be taller...
• Dream Ballet: There is a dream-sequence where Petrushka witnesses her pre-cyborg self, aspiring ballerina Elisabeta, practice her dancing.
• Green Eyed Redhead: she does literally have green eyes and red hair! Petrushka also does fulfil the further characteristics of the archetype - she is much more acquainted with hand-to-hand combat than the other cyborgs (Fiery Redhead) and does become aLove Interest (Green Eyes).
• Master Of Disguise: This is Petrushka's specialty, trained in it by her handler.
• Meaningful Name: Petrushka is the name of a puppet used in Russian theatre - thus reflecting both the character's origins as a Russian ballerina, and her status as an Agency cyborg.
• Ms Fanservice: Petra was converted into a cyborg at a significantly older age than most of the earlier girls. This is one of the major reasons that her character is controversial among the fandom.
  • You say that, but we've actually seen more nudity of Triela and underwear shots of the other girls than we ever have of Petrushka. This is something that gets talked up by Petrushka's Hatedom more than anything else.
  • It's those legs, they're almost always bare and go all the way to the ground. Elisabeta's legs were not as shapely, and about 3 inches shorter.
• The Scrappy: Alongside her handler, Alessandro, for the below trope. Your Mileage May Vary.
• Teacher Student Romance: Petrushka falls in love with her handler Alessandro; Alessandro, after initially resisting her increasingly obvious affection (incorrectly believing her to be driven by cyborg conditioning and not wanting to take advantage of her), eventually acknowledges her feelings to be real and genuine and forms a relationship with her. This is not a Mentor Ship because the pairing is not implicit but actually occurs.

Beatrice

• Anyone Can Die: After Angelica's death, we were led to believe that Beatrice was becoming an Ascended Extra to replace her. Beatrice started to make several more appearances where previously she had barely featured... then an anti-material gun pits her like an olive. And she's vaporised by a cruise missile.
• Emotionless Girl: Beatrice says she's never felt moved enough to smile, and is curious about how the other girls seem to feel happiness or fear so easily.
• Gimmick: In the sense of a defining trait, before beliefs, personality or appearance Beatrice was distinguished chiefly by her abilities as a bomb-sniffer, being able to literally smell traces of explosive.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The one time Beatrice raises her voice beyond a flat monotone is her scream at Triela to hit the deck as she, mortally wounded, heaves an imminently-detonating warhead out of a window, and herself along with it.
• Never Found The Body: They did, it just took a week..
• Odd Couple: Beatrice is flat and almost monosyllabic, while by contrast her handler is effervescent and talkative.
  • Her handler could just be pleased to have someone who will silently endure the relentless verbiage that he inflicts on those around him.
    • I think that that's being too cynical - in his dealings with Beatrice he seems to be genuinely affectionate.
• Satellite Character: Given less focus than the girls talked about above, however she has a somewhat larger role in the second season of the anime.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Most of the characters in Gunslinger Girl have fairly conservative realistic hair colour and style (Triela's pigtails notwithstanding) - but despite being in all other respects an unexpressive character, Beatrice has mauve hair.
  • Mauve is a dull colour, which might suit her lack of personality.

Jose Croce (Henrietta's handler)

• Eyepatch Of Power: Jose, after the tower incident. Coupled with Sanity Slippage (now he's seeing Enrica too).
• Morality Pet: Given the affection Jose showers on Henrietta, it's easy to forget that he too is a ruthless anti-terrorist operative, engaged in a personal Roaring Rampage Of Revenge. Lampshaded in a scene where a female politician crippled by a bomb comments on how frightening Jose seems. Henrietta naturally protests that he's "the kindest man in all of Italy!" The politician wisely lets the matter drop.
• Took A Level In Jerkass: Intially Jose appears to be a model for handlers who treat their cyborgs kindly and compassionately; however, it is later revealed that he finds being nice to his cyborg a draining experience and that keeping her happy and placated is an increasingly troublesome act. Eventually he becomes emotionally exhausted (accelerated by the personal tragedy of meeting the killer of his parents and losing an eye to him), and can't muster any opposing argument when the Agency wants to "reset" the cyborg, wiping out her memories and personality (essentially destroying all that distinguished the girl he's cared for for years), to reprogram her with new combat skills. Thereafter Jose, no longer keeping up a pretence of being mellow, treats his cyborg in a much more callous and utilitarian manner.

Jean Croce (Rico's handler)

• Aloof Big Brother
• Defrosting Ice King: Jean, he starts off by far the coldest handler but by the end of the second anime season finally seems to have warmed up to Rico.
  • Rico is precious to Jean (she's the instrument of his vengeance). Jean is just really crappy at nurturing and softer feelings and stuff like that. This causes problems, recently Jean tries to give a rousing speech to Rico about getting Dante for him, even if it kills her. Rico's reaction is totally uncomprehending; if you haven't taught someone emotions, you really can't appeal to them.
  • While in the Carabinieri Jean was pursued by female subordinate Sophia Durante, who fell in Love At First Sight with the handsome aloof officer despite his warning that he was a cold fish. Her persistance breaks through his reserve and they agree to get married — her subsequent death in the same terrorist attack that kills Jean's sister no doubt reinforces his belief that it's better to go through life as a ruthless unfeeling bastard.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Has no qualms about using it himself, if there is any chance of gaining useful info, or sometimes when he's just extra angry. Usually delegates this to Rico, who will cheerfully (though not maliciously) take care of it.
• Jerkass Facade: Jean maintains a cold demeanor towards his cyborg Rico, and hits her whenever she doesn't perform to standard. Seeing as the cyborgs are all going to die before adulthood as a result of their conditioning, he has good reason not to get too attached, especially since Jean still feels the loss of his sister Enrica. On rare occasions, however, this façade cracks, like when Rico is injured and falls into the sea during a battle and Jean desperately dives in to save her.
  • I wonder if Jean might actually feed off of the resentment directed his way to some extent - the strained atmosphere removing comfort and understanding away from him, and stoking up frustrations in himself, and so strengthening and keeping him by default in the hard-set flinty face that he's set to the world. I don't believe that Jean is naturally nasty, he's not so grim a character as he presents himself - from his grandfather's death to his early career in the manga, he's been playing a role that he feels that he ought to. It even goes beyond Sophia's death - when he gives Rico a hug at the range after Angelica's death, we understand that he's cold to and demanding of her because he feels that he shouldn't be affectionate to a weapon, rather than him being unconscious of the fact that he's being insensitive. Jean is a jerk because he perceives that he has to be to endure in this line of work, inflicting bitterness and infuriation on himself to be the goads driving him on - if he mellowed out, he'd run out of fuel.
• Knight Templar: Has been one pretty much since birth, having his family killed only increased his fanaticism.
• Takehito Koyasu: Jean in "Il Teatrino".
• Would Hit A Girl: You bet, and not just suspects. He's smacked Rico hard enough to draw blood, and gave Priscilla a shiner during hand-to-hand sparring. On the other hand, he doesn't enjoy hitting them, and he never hit his fiance (though he did throw an orange in her face, it made sense in context).

Victor Hilshire (Triela's handler)

• The Atoner: Hilshire clearly feels guilty over Rachelle Belleut's death in their bungled raid in Amsterdam, and goes far beyond the call of duty to protect the girl she died to save in an effort to make her Heroic Sacrifice mean something.
• Cowboy Cop: Supposedly the reason he got kicked out of Europol. It turns out that Hilshire kidnapped Triela from hospital so she could receive treatment in Italy, unaware of the real nature of the Social Welfare Agency. When he discovers the truth Jean Croce gives Hilshire a choice of becoming Triela's handler, or becoming a corpse and abandoning Triela to an unknown fate.
• Germanic Depressives: Hilshire seems the typical "serious German" to his fellow handlers, and when the audience first sees him he's keeping an emotional distance from Triela, leaving her confused as to exactly what he expects of her. But it turns out that Hilshire's just never been comfortable dealing with children or socialising with others.
• Knight In Sour Armor
• Meganekko: Hilshire appears to have a thing for these women, or at least ones who share his anti-social loneliness and hunger for justice.
• Morality Chain: Inverted with Hilshire, a good cop who's forced to carry out assassinations because becoming Triela's handler was the only way to protect her.
• Naive Newcomer: At Europol.
• Nice Job Breaking It Hero: You've got this girl who's traumatised and mutilated from a snuff film, and you've heard of an agency in Italy that can make her all better...

Marco Toni (Angelica's handler)

• Handicapped Badass
• Took A Level In Jerkass: Flashbacks reveal that Marco was a good handler to Angelica (of the friendly brother type) but when she starts losing her memory he becomes resentful and indifferent. He does show moments of concern, but it isn't until his Heel Realisation that Marco starts trying to comfort Angelica in her final days. Later when Sandro asks for advise handling the cyborgs, Marco can only warn him against getting attached to them in the first place.

Raballo (Claes' handler)

• Handicapped Badass
• Jerkass Facade: Raballo is a gruff veteran embittered over the loss of his leg in a meaningless accident, who's only training Claes so he can get back into the military police. He's curt towards her and strikes people on a couple of occasions (not without cause) but in the end is the only one who makes an active step towards trying to stop what's being done to the girls.
• Make It Look Like An Accident: Raballo decides to go to the newspapers about the SWA. The next thing we see is Jean telling Claes that her handler was killed in a hit and run accident.

Alessandro "Sandro" Ricci (Petrushka's handler)

• Heroes Want Redheads: Averted. Alessandro actively dislikes redheads (after his redheaded mentor ran out on him) and is frustrated when his cyborg arrives with a luscious scarlet mantle.
• Honey Trap: Sandro's job was to seduce female radicals (or women related to radicals) which has given him a Handsome Lech reputation among his colleagues.
• Anti Hero: Sandro is specifically recruited from Intelligence because his morals will be more flexible than the military and police types previously recruited as handlers (e.g. police and soldiers are supposed to protect women and children, whereas spies are more likely to be Manipulative Bastards).
• Sherlock Scan: Has developed this skill since he was a kid.
• Teacher Student Romance: With the mentor who recruited him into the intelligence services.

Flanca and Franco

• Didnt Find The Body: They drive into a river at the end of Teatrino, but the search finds no sign of their bodies.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: People assume these two are lovers, but it's actually a case of Like Brother And Sister — Franco gave Caterina the name Flanca in deliberate evocation of that trope.
• Irony: Caterina is the one responsible for Marco (a handler with the Agency) getting together with his girlfriend Patricia.
• Make It Look Like An Accident: Caterina's father dies in prison under suspicious circumstances when she appeals his conviction. This is what caused her to become a terrorist.
• Shell Shocked Senior: Franco no longer believes in terrorist causes; only the fervour of his partner keeps him going.
• The Stoic: Franco. Flanca often jibes him about it.
• Wouldnt Hurt A Child: The pair try to avoid placing bombs where children will be hurt. Flanca also stops Pino from killing Aurora. Flanca even tries to avoid running down Rico who's pointing a gun at them — Franco forces the car back on course, knocking Rico over the hood.
  • This seems to be a thing for her: It's implied that she's the one who tipped off the police about the mansion the terrorists are using at the end of the first season because she deduced they were planning to kill their child hostage.

Pinnochio (AKA Pino)

• Badass Normal: Pinocchio doesn't have cybernetic implants, yet in his first encounter with Triela he is able to knock her out with an uppercut, amongst other things. He ends up fracturing bones in his hand, though, since she has a carbon fiber-reinforced skull. Pino is also generally shown to be a rough equal to the girls in skill, due his being trained by ex-CIA agent "John Doe".
• Cultured Warrior: Subverted. Pino appears to be one due to his ability to play the piano, but it turns out that he can only play the one tune and that his surrogate father kept him out of school.
• Distaff Counterpart: Like Triela, Pino is a victim of child abuse who was rescued by his surrogate father, and who measures his success solely by his ability to kill for that 'father'.
• The Stoic
• Wall Of Weapons: In Pino's hideout in Montalcino.
• Wouldnt Hurt A Child: Pino kills a young girl on his first mission, emptying his silenced pistol into her body. He tries to warn Aurora away from him, but is perfectly willing to kill her when she stumbles into their hideout (Flanca puts a stop to this). When Triela is lying unconscious in front of him however it brings up memories of his first mission and he's unable to pull the trigger.

Cristiano Savonarola

• Big Bad: For the first and second seasons of the anime. Cristiano runs the Milan branch of Padania.
• Cultured Warrior
• Even Evil Has Standards: Orders his men not to commit violence inside art galleries or churches — as they're in Milan his underling gripes that it doesn't leave much for them to attack.
• Not Quite Dead: Reappears (in currently untranslated chapters) as an Evil Cripple.
• Parental Substitute: Raises Pinocchio as a child assassin, but by default he becomes a surrogate son.
• Shell Shocked Veteran: Cristiano appears to accept his fate when Padania betrays him to the police, as someone has to pay the price for their recent failures at the hands of the SWA. When Pinocchio refuses to leave his side, Cristiano decides to flee the country to save Pinocchio's life. Unfortunately that decision comes too late as the Agency is already moving in for the kill.

Giacomo Dante

• Big Bad: Replaces Cristiano as the main target of the SWA after the latter goes Thelma And Louise with Franco and Flanca. Cristiano as it turns out is Not Quite Dead.
• Its Personal: Dante was behind the bombing which killed Jean and Jose's parents and kid sister, not to mention Jean's fiancee. Unfortunately their eagerness to kill Dante means they're blind to his Xanatos Gambit.
• Terrorist Without A Cause
• Xanatos Gambit: His men seize the Belltower of St. Marks to demand the release of a terrorist leader — it turns out Dante is actually several miles away with an anti-material rifle and the detonator for a cruise missile, waiting to ambush the SWA when they attack