Midou Ban
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Sex: male Nom de Guerre: The Man with the Evil Eye |
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A Few Words on Ban: intelligent,
arrogant, canny, self-centered, inner softie, letch, wacky, greedy, sly, irreverent,
jaded, heavy smoker, logical
overall: bastardly
Ban's Story
The "B" in Get Backers, Ban is technically
the hero of the story, though Ginji often ends up stealing the show. He
is the brains behind GB, and usually the one to do the planning, if there is
any (and there often isn‘t), on their recovery runs.
He also handles GB’s money, heading up most of the negotiations with clients
or with Hevn. Consequently, whenever GB’s hard earned paycheck goes
up in smoke, it’s almost always Ban’s fault. While no one can
call him “stupid”, some… er, well, a lot of Ban’s plans
-- especially those involving making money fast-- are… I guess the best
name for them is “hair-brained, cockamamie schemes”. Whether
or not they succeed is entirely based on how lucky GB happens to be that day,
and how much of a beating they can take. ~.~;;
In contrast to Ginji’s bright, fluffy cheerful personality, Ban is (slightly)
more serious, cynical and down-to-earth. Where Ginji is Warm Compassion,
Ban is Cold Logic, and he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if that’s
what it takes to get the job done. He is incredibly intelligent, sharp
and very quick witted. At his disposal is a deep reservoir of scientific
knowledge, from trivial things like which strands of a spider’s web are
sticky and which aren’t, to more complex ideas like the general workings
of an atom bomb. To top this all off, he has been told constantly, since
he was a child, that he has a genius for battle. And he does.
You can imagine what that does to his self-opinion, I bet. Ban knows exactly how good he is, and exactly how much better that is than just about everybody else. He knows this VERY well. So it’s no surprise to say he's got more confidence than any 6 people put together should have, and an ego three times as big. And it’s a very touchy ego, too. It’s not unusual for Ban to refer to himself as “Ore-sama” (Lord Me), especially when he starts dissing his opponents. It doesn’t take much to goad him into a fight, either. A calculated insult is all it really takes.
Put that all together, and Ban comes off as not an easy guy to like. He’s never really done much to make himself an easy guy to like. He’s got enemies popping out of the woodwork, and all of them name him a cold-hearted snake of a bastard.
In a fight, Ban has access to three major weapons, all of which he can use devastatingly well. His first and most notorious weapon is the Jagan, his "Evil Eye." When someone looks into his eyes, Ban can trap them in a flawless illusion that lasts exactly 1 minute. The illusion can be anything Ban wants it to be, from completely off-the-wall things to very subtle twists on reality. However, the Jagan only works on one person once within 24 hours. Ban can only safely use the Jagan 3 times total within that same 24 hour limit. I don’t think he isn’t capable of using it a fourth time, it's just rumored that were he to try, it could be life-threatening.
When it's not worth using the Jagan, Ban turns to his other major weapon; brute strength. For a guy who looks like a bean-pole and weighs less, Ban has super-strong hands-- 400 pounds of crushing pressure, to be precise. He's given that power the quaint name "Snake Bite." It's fairly simple for him to twist steel to bits, or rip flesh right off a body.
The last isn’t really a weapon, not in that it has a name anyway, but it’s one few can match him in-- speed. Ban is fast. Very, very fast. Fast enough to look like he’s teleporting from place to place in the middle of a fight. Only Akabane, and maybe Kyouji are a match for him. Combine all that with a genius for combat and you have someone who actually lives up to his reputation as nigh-invincible.
But nobody (except Ginji) knows much beyond that reputation. Ban is in no hurry to shed any light on the matter, either. If there's one thing Ban does better than fight, it's keep secrets. He's got quite a lot of them, too. Before he met Ginji, what he did and where he went are virtual unknowns. If pressed, he'll own up to a German grandmother, and staying with Himiko and her older brother for a while, but little more.
Actually, how and where he met Ginji isn't common knowledge either, except that it was in Mugenjou a couple years ago. Though perhaps people are most mystified as to why the two became, and still are, best friends. Reasoning aside, it's obvious that Ginji is extremely important to Ban, moreso than anyone will believe. It’s hard to call Ban a worrywart when it comes to Ginji’s safety, both have implicit trust in each other’s level of skill. However, when faced with an opponent of considerable skill, Ban always makes a point, a BIG point, of reminding Ginji to call him if it ever gets “dangerous”. Ban hears him, too, no matter how far apart the two of them happen to be. How and when this bond came about is as of yet unknown.
He's also rather attached to Himiko, though you wouldn't get him to admit that on pain of humiliation. Stick around him a little while, especially after Ginji’s really nagged him, and you’ll find out that Ban is actually a big softie on the inside. Not the sort who will go adopting stray kittens or anything, but certainly not the icewater-in-his-veins bastard everyone else makes him out to be.
And somewhere, who knows where, he managed to learn how to play the violin at a professional level of skill.
SPOILERS (black on black, so just highlight to read)
Unlike Ginji, whose powers are inborn, Ban was given most of his around the age of 8. I think the strength in his hands has been his since birth, but he was definitely given the Jagan and one other thing: Aesclepius. Aesclepius is a pretty dang powerful snake spirit that is housed in Ban's right arm. Only rarely will Ban resort to calling it. A short vocal incantation is needed to summon it, and the result is an explosive boost to his strength and speed.
Who gave him Aesclepius? Simple. His grandmother, a woman who is called alternately the greatest witch of the 20th century, and the Witch Queen. Ban is her only heir, and the last of those in whom "the blood of witches runs true". He lived with her until about ten years ago, when "for the sake of the family, he needed to die". I think Ban’s mother might have something to do with that one. There have been a couple scenes with (I’m guessing) his mother disowning young Ban, calling him not her own child, but a “demon’s get” and a “cursed child”.
Instead of actually killing Ban, his grandmother gave him Aesclepius and had him sent to an old student of hers, Maria Noches, in Japan. She charged him to become strong, and to learn more than any normal person would ever know.
Well, Ban did both exceptionally well, though he didn‘t spend much more than a year with Maria. He ran away, making his own way in the world, becoming highly intelligent and keeper of a good number of secrets. He knows more about Himiko and her relation to "Voodoo Child" than he's going to tell her. I also get the feeling that he knows a lot more about the true nature of the relationship between Ginji and Raitei than he's telling.
Actually, Ban met Raitei before meeting Ginji, and the two certainly did have one helluva fight. In volume 14, Akabane asks Ban who won it. Ban's answer was a big-time dodge-- "I'm alive and standing here. Ain't that answer enough?" My personal opinion is that the fight hasn't ended yet. Neither he nor Raitei won, and sometime down the road, they're going to have to fight it out again.
A very surprising fact is that Ban and Ginji didn’t create “Get Backers”, they inherited the name and the job. From whom is, of course, not clear.