The following is a list of fictional characters from the anime show Gad Guard and their description. The characters were designed by Masahiro Aizawa based on Yoshitsune Izuna's original designs.
Main characters Hajiki Sanada
Age: 16
Hajiki is the main protagonist of Gad Guard and is a short-tempered and somewhat jaded boy. Being the eldest child and only son of the Sanada family, Hajiki works as a delivery boy in Unit Blue for Mr. Hachisuka of the Hachisuka Express. A bit of a degenerate and a punk initially, Hajiki skips school, races the cops on his skateboard or moped, and hangs out at all hours with his similarly punkish friends for lack of anything better to do. His mother was widowed when his father, an astronaut, died in a freak accident concerning the launching of a ship into outer space. Now the man of the house, Hajiki works himself to the bone, losing sleep and even putting himself in danger to help his mother and his sister Satsuki survive.
The main events in the series center on Hajiki's rivalry with Katana and the relationships he shares with the other Techode owners. After running into the justice-crazed Takumi, the friendly Aiko and the danger-prone Arashi, the group forms a friendship over the course of the series. Their relationships vary from episode to episode, as Hajiki sees Takumi as overly righteous, thinks Aiko's a little too obsessed with mutual friendship, and can't seem to understand what to do with Arashi. Still, he seems to hold all four of the others close, even Katana, and like Aiko, he wishes they were all on the same side.
'Hajiki' is Japanese slang for 'gun', an object that is by nature quick, forceful and erratic. A gun is also commonly considered the weapon opposite of a sword, which is by definition a sharp, precise and brutally personal weapon, qualities relatable to Katana.
Lightning Lightning, named after his father's plane, is Hajiki's Techode that he receives in the first episode after coming into contact with a Gad he was delivering. Lightning is very quick and especially made for melee fighting and jumping through the use of the extendable exhaust tubes coming out of its neck. It also has engines in its lower legs, which can propel to great speeds when it gets down on one knee. Lightning is mostly red, white, and blue and resembles a sort of superhero.
Katana
Age: 18
Katana (pronounced kah-ta-nah, as opposed to ka-tah-nah, like the sword) is the main anti-hero of the series who acts as antagonist to the main characters, though he constantly switches between villain and ally from situation to situation, depending on his ever-shifting mood. Appearing as a gothic mutation of a schoolboy in a striped shirt, sweater vest, tie, and slacks, all under a trench coat, Katana is tall and narrow in appearance, gaunt and deathly pale, with a scar beneath his left eye, and he is constantly carrying a gun. Katana works as a man-for-hire, living on the garage-level of an abandoned building on the edge of a junkyard in Night Town. Dark, cold and stoic by nature, Katana lives alone, having no friends and seemingly not wanting any. However, Katana develops a very strong and almost obsessive attachment to Saiyuri over the course of the story, her disappearance becoming the main motivation for his actions near the end of the series. Another person important to Katana is Radigue, who acted as Katana's father after his family died in a shipwreck and is most likely to be the originator of Katana's secret enjoyment of building machinery and digging up Heavy Metal parts. Personality-wise, he shows no interest in much of anything but money and rising to the top of the criminal ladder, his grand intention to rule over Night Town. While not evil, Katana is a sociopath.
Katana is a very proud Heavy Metal operator, having built his first one in the series, Seven, himself. However, early in the series, it is destroyed by Lightning and later replaced with Katana's Techode, Zero. Katana becomes very bitter about the loss of his original Heavy Metal, and although Zero is stronger his attachment to Seven never truly leaves him, and its destruction becomes the basis of his rivalry with Hajiki, a rivalry that eventually grows into a battle to show who is the bigger man. His need to prove that he is better grows into an insane obsession over the course of the story.
Along with Hajiki, Katana meets up with the other three Techode operators, and shows a variety of opinions about them. Aiko earns Katana's slight trust when she rescues Sayuri from a dangerous spot in the middle of one of his battles, who then brings him lunch daily. She seems to sit on neutral ground with him, to where Katana rescues her from being ganged up on in a bad part of town. Takumi, however, earned Katana's disdain almost to the level of that of Hajiki due to his meddling and loud mouthed sense of justice, and he delights in baiting and teasing him coldly only to prove that he is superior to the short-fused boy. Arashi stands as Katana's way of getting to Hajiki, using her as a messenger and even learning his name from her. They get into several fights, and he seems to despise her, to the point of near-blind rage in their final confrontation.
Zero Although it is no replacement for Seven in his affections, Zero means a lot to Katana, to the point where it being damaged depresses him. Zero is symbolically the image of what Katana wishes to be, or at least what he would like others to perceive him as: something to fear. It resembles him to a slight degree, being tall, narrow and gangly, almost like a black skeleton and having glowing red eyes. Zero is the only Techode to come with an actual discharging weapon, a machine gun on its left arm. Katana has a habit of pushing Zero to its limits, as he does with himself, not recognizing damage until it is so severe the Techode kicks out and fails in tough spots, overcome with the strain.
Arashi Shinozuka
Age: 16
The daughter of a great martial-artist, Arashi (referred to as Shinozuka by Hajiki) left her home in Day Town to live on her own in Night Town, going to the same neighborhood catholic school as Hajiki and his friends. She ran away from home feeling she would never be good enough for her father, who expected before her birth to have a son, only to be disappointed with a daughter instead, and Arashi was given a boy's name because of that. As she came from a good part of town, Arashi has some trouble initially adjusting to life in the ghetto, such as her belongings getting stolen and not having batteries to cope with the power shutting off at midnight. She soon learns and tries to teach herself to fit in, doing everything from making friends with some boys at school to getting a job as a billboard repair worker to support herself. She is witness to the creation of Lightning, and after seeing Zero (belonging to Katana), Thunderbolt (Takumi), and Messerschmitt (Aiko), she longs for a Gad of her own, something she later finds by accident.
Arashi is Hajiki's love interest in the series, even though he all but ignores her through the first part of the series. Initially, she seems to annoy him, but Hajiki eventually grows accustomed to her even if her idealistic views don't always coincide with his. Arashi follows him relentlessly, seeming hellbent on staying with him to the point of following him to work and popping up in the middle of several of his Techode battles. In a few episodes when their views have clashed, Arashi has used her karate skills on Hajiki. By the end of the series, Arashi and Hajiki affirm their feelings for each other, much to the shock of the teachers who just walked in when they kissed for the first time.
Relationship-wise, besides Hajiki, Arashi has little contact with the other characters, save for Katana. She finds people like Katana disgusting because they do bad things, although she herself, like Takumi and Aiko, does not understand the troubles of living in a place like Night Town. Several times, she is held at gun-point by him, and threatened or told to pass a message to Hajiki, and at one point tries to fight him, only to have him beat her with little effort. Arashi opposes Katana and his obsession with besting Hajiki repeatedly, and continues to act as a problem to him through the entire series, though Katana sacrifices Zero to save her from death in the final episode, something she never gets the chance to ask him about. Aiko is portrayed to be a sort of friend to Arashi, but when the two of them are in the room with Hajiki, she seeks to vie for his attention, something Aiko doesn't notice. Takumi and Arashi have little to no friendship short of acquaintance.
Hayate Hayate, named for the Japanese word referring to the winds, is modeled after Arashi's desire to fly, a symbol of her freedom, and thus she never uses it in battle, but only to rescue the others and herself from danger and perhaps to feel that she fits in with the other Techode owners. It is the only Techode with flight capabilities in the series, spinning its head and the wings attached to its neck like an enormous propeller. Other than this ability, Hayate has no special functions for fighting or violent conflict.
Takumi Kisaragi
Age: 16
Takumi is a short and wealthy boy who lives in Day Town; his most defining attribute in the series is being almost obsessed with justice and the differences between right and wrong. When Takumi was young, his parents left him alone with a very large sum of money, more than he claims he could ever use and will never have to get a job. So because of his abundance of money and free time, using his Techode Thunderbolt, he goes out and attempts to solve crimes and punish evil-doers, because he wants to do something good, as he feels the local police force is very lacking. Takumi is also noted to have a very short temper and constantly takes out his anger on people, usually ending up in him getting into a wide variety of trouble.
Takumi's main adversary in the series is Katana who is essentially his polar opposite, using his Techode to commit crimes and not caring about others at all along with several polarities in appearance, personality and backstory. Takumi refers to Katana as evil and is more obsessed with Katana than Katana is with Hajiki. Repeatedly, Takumi claims Katana is a beast, raised in violence, and for that reason, violence is all he knows, saying that he cannot be made friends with, and he is not a real person at all. Despite all Takumi's loathing, Katana sees him only as a pest that he is doing nothing to provoke and on more than one occasion beats Takumi severely.
Later in the series it becomes apparent that Takumi's constant ranting about Katana being violent is actually Takumi casting his own control issues on Katana because it is easier for the "bad guy" to be the one with problems, as "heroes" are good and just and can never be wrong. It is Hajiki that tells Takumi he could never truly understand how complicated it is to live without money, as his parents left him enough so that he would never have to "waste his life" in a job. Unlike Hajiki, who works for a living, and Katana, who steals and is a mercenary for a living, Takumi is "too busy being high and mighty and righteous" to see that the world isn't black and white. Takumi later admits to himself that he does not know what he was discussing and knew nothing about the people he was fighting or who he was protecting.