Revy

Revy, or Rebecca Lee, sometimes referred by her first name, and commonly referred to as "Two Hands", due to her skill with dual-wielding, is the main female protagonist of the series. She is the main gunfighter of the Lagoon Company. Revy was born in New York City. Few details are known about Revy's past as what is gathered is from brief flashbacks from both the manga and the show. Revy was born as Rebecca Lee, a Chinese-American, in the poverty-stricken Chinatown district of New York City and raised by an abusive, alcoholic father. One day, after fleeing from one of her father's rampages, she was arrested, beaten, and raped by a corrupt police officer. Upon being returned home following this ordeal, Revy shot and killed her father after he callously asked her for another drink. There were apparently similar incidents between Revy and the police, particularly at the 27th Precinct. Eventually the assaults resulted in Revy losing her faith in God, leading her to believe that the police abused her because to them she was "just another little ghetto rat, with no power and no God." Revy has alluded to doing time in prison, but it is unknown how she ended up in Roanapur.

Revy is a Chinese-American woman of approximately moderate height in her early to mid-twenties. She has amber-brown eyes, a slightly tan complexion, and typically keeps her plum-colored hair in a loose ponytail, with rather large bangs falling onto her forehead. In spite of her slender build, Revy keeps up her physique, sporting a slightly muscular build, which she doesn't conceal in the least. On her right upper arm, Revy has a tribal tattoo, reaching all the way up to her neck. Her wardrobe typically consists of a pair of Vietnam War-era US military jungle boots without socks, very short cut-off jeans, (turned into Denim Shorts) and a black crop top, leaving her belly exposed. She never bothers buttoning up her pants, and instead uses a US Army webbing belt to keep them up. Revy also sports a pair of brown leather cross-draw shoulder holsters to store her twin Berettas in when she isn't using them. She also typically wears a pair of fingerless black gloves. For colder climates, such as winter in Tokyo, she resorts to something a little warmer, including a warm hat, a lined brown coat, full gloves, a horizontally striped miniskirt, leggings, and brown boots. Revy is very competitive, sarcastic, battle hardened, battle hungry, loud, psychotically humored, rude, misanthropic, easily-bored, and extremely ill-tempered. Unlike Rock, she is undiplomatic, believing in the use of brute force and coercion to get her way. Surprisingly, she's revealed to be highly ticklish by Sawyer. Of all the characters in the series, Revy uses the most foul language and is also a heavy smoker and drinker. Revy is a merciless and sadistic killer, without a conscience, who will be more than ready to kill anyone at the slightest provocation, even unarmed civilians (as seen in episode 6), and she kills in cold-blood as seen in OVA # 3, when she murders a wounded FARC soldier after promising him to take him to a hospital in exchange for finding Roberta's location. She takes maniacal glee in killing anyone she fights or just for fun. She also has very little remorse for her enemies and many times have often stepped on male enemies' crotches for fun to show them how weak they are. However, she looks at it as doing them a favor as she believes any man would love a sexy woman such as her to "abuse" them. Whilst appearing to be driven by general bloodlust, it is shown throughout the series that Revy subconsciously uses violence as a dysfunctional coping mechanism and outlet for her deeply repressed emotional and psychological issues.

An example of this is, when becoming uneasy at accepting both Rock and Benny into the Lagoon company, Revy vents her trust issues by becoming particularly unpredictable during missions and getting what Dutch nicknames "Whitman Fever", going on indiscriminate shooting rampages and executing hostiles and innocent bystanders alike. The inhabitants of Roanapur tend to take Revy at face value, as a sadistic, incredibly destructive, volatile, gun-crazed psychopath, and this is how Revy initially thinks of herself, ignoring the psychological trauma and emotional turmoil that fuels her behavior, possibly investing herself in this surface image to prevent others from discovering her emotional scars, keeping them hidden even from herself. It is only when Rock arrives and begins to confront her over her actions that she begins to develop some reluctant introspection, and seriously think about who she has become and who she really is. One of the ways Revy's subconscious pain and emotional scars manifest themselves is her aversion to the empathy of others or others trying to relate to her. People presuming to understand what she has been through or how it has affected her is a huge beserk button for Revy, causing her to react in a violent rage, suggesting the depth of the bitterness and grief her early life has bred in her. She has a changing but volatile attitude towards Rock, the newest and most outspokenly humane crew member of the Lagoon Company. Although she respects him later in the series, she is mostly hostile towards Rock, as she tried to intentionally kill him on at least two occasions and threatened him on countless others. However, she does have a tendency to save Rock from critical situations, and later on she admits to considering him as family. Due to an impoverished upbringing which involved verbal, physical and sexual abuse from those who had power over her (such as her father or the police), Revy has developed an obsession towards power, over both herself and others, which causes her to appear fiercely independent and violently assertive, often using verbal or physical violence as a response to anyone who crosses her or to assert her dominance. However, while Revy initially appears to be tough, savage and strong-minded, her exterior actually covers up a profound lack of inner-strength and fear of the powerlessness she felt as a child. Her independence is actually more of a reactive attachment disorder, alienating others as much as possible to prevent the exposure of her own weakness and vulnerability. Revy believes the chief source of power in life is money, the "one thing everyone respects and agrees on", and consequentially has developed an obsession with maximizing the profits from each job as much as possible, such as ransoming others and looting corpses, when she feels that the Lagoon is not paid enough. Later on in the series it is suggested that, despite her insistence otherwise, deep down Revy actually hates Roanapur, her lifestyle and the person she has become, and that she wants to change but does not know how. In Tokyo, Revy opens up to Rock, saying that she has lived "on dirty air" her whole life and, though she temporarily forgot it, she would be incapable of living in "a good place" like the one Rock came from. In "Roberta's Blood Trail", after Revy states that Fabiola Iglesias sees the world as a garden of roses, Fabiola retorts that Revy is actually the one who sees the world as a garden of roses, one that she herself was expelled from. This feeling that she was unreasonably denied a happy life causes Revy to adamantly view the world as bleak and desolate, to the exclusion of all contradictory evidence.