Pippin

Pippin is an enormous, heavily muscled man with black hair, listed by the guidebook near a hundred and ninety centimeters and above a hundred and thirty kilograms. He favors a spiked mace but also swings a pickaxe from his mining years. Kentaro Miura based the character's build on his own and cast Pippin as the group's reliable powerhouse.

Silent almost to a fault, Pippin speaks only rarely, and usually just to note something vital or to warn the others of danger, whether yelling for them to duck under arrows or pushing a cup at Guts and urging him to drink. He is caring and deeply loyal, most often at Rickert's side and quick to shield the boy in a fight. Slow to rile, he keeps his calm even after an ungrateful Guts shoves him off, and his steadiness anchors the whole band through its worst hours.

Before the young Band of the Falcon takes shape, Pippin toils in a mine beset by fire accidents, and the tunnel and gas-flow knowledge he gains there pays off years later. He is present when the band takes in a young Casca, and he stands in its ranks as Guts joins, hauling the surly newcomer off to drink after his first fight alongside them. Once Midland enlists the band in its long war with Tudor, Pippin fights through the major campaigns, backing Guts against an apostle, guarding the nobles at the Autumn Hunt, and helping Princess Charlotte down from her horse during an assassination attempt. At the storming of Doldrey he keeps Rickert from death, and afterward he is knighted with the other unit commanders, only to be jolted when Griffith seemingly dies during the celebration.

After Guts beats Griffith in their duel and departs, the band is duped into waiting in an open field, and Pippin is the first to catch the oncoming hoofbeats and shout for all to take cover. A year on, one of the last members standing, he races to save Casca from Silat and joins the party sent to pull Griffith out of Wyndham, made up of himself, Guts, Casca, and Judeau. His mining skill proves crucial during the breakout: when a Bakiraka assassin triggers a gas blast in the sewer, he stays cool and hammers a hole through the tunnel roof so the fire vents away harmlessly, and elsewhere he cracks a wall to spark light in the dark. He pairs with Guts to fend off the Black Dog Knights, the two cleaving foes so hard that Guts names them a matched power duo.

Once Griffith's broken condition comes to light and the band drifts toward Midland's border, Pippin, like the rest, quietly accepts that their time together is ending. At the Eclipse he is branded across his right arm and spends his life so that Casca and Judeau can break away, battling bravely until the swarming apostles bear him down. His hollowed body is later used by the Count to ambush Guts before it is ripped apart and eaten.