Keiji

Broad-shouldered and tan, Keiji stands taller than most of his squadmates. He crops his dark hair into a buzz cut that lightens near the nape, and his face carries pronounced cheekbones with faint lines beneath the eyes. On missions he wears the Survey Corps' standard gear; off duty he layers a short-sleeved shirt over a long-sleeved one with dark trousers and, at times, a jacket.

Loyalty to the Survey Corps anchors Keiji, but his temper rides close to the surface. When Annie Leonhart seals herself in crystal beyond the reach of justice, he stabs at the barrier over and over, cursing her, until Hange orders him off. The same short fuse shows when Eren breaks cover against orders and Keiji chews him out on the spot. He is blunt besides, remarking within earshot of one Titan shifter that another of them was hardly a normal person.

Keiji debuts during the 57th Expedition, tasked by Erwin Smith with rigging charges to strip the captured Female Titan's hands away from its nape; his warning that the blast would kill whoever sat inside prompts Erwin to reposition the explosives to sever only the wrists. When the Titan's scream summons a horde, he joins the futile effort to cut the creatures down before the retreat sounds. In Stohess he chases Annie's Titan until flying rubble breaks off the pursuit, and after her defeat he helps pull her from the nape, moments before the crystal forms and his rage boils over.

During the Wall Rose crisis he rides with Hange's relief force to Utgard Castle, berates Eren for exposing himself, and afterward hauls soldiers up the Wall while musing that Ymir's wounds would have finished an ordinary human. When Reiner and Bertolt reveal their Titans, Keiji dives for the Colossus Titan's nape, noting how sluggish the giant is, until scalding steam throws the attackers back. The explosive burst that ends the battle leaves him burned and unconscious atop Wall Rose.

In the Royal Government arc he observes Hange's hardening experiments, guards the cells holding Nick's murderers, and hears out Erwin's plan to shadow the captured Eren and Historia to Rod Reiss. Watching the transport from an alley, he dies instantly when Kenny Ackerman's squad ambushes the pursuers, a bullet to the head dropping him in the street for a passerby to find. He surfaces twice more in memory: among the dead who ask whether their sacrifice meant anything as Erwin wavers in Shiganshina, and among the comrades Hange recalls when refusing to endorse the Rumbling.