Meryl Stryfe

Meryl is responsible, skeptical and quick-tempered. She tries to maintain professional discipline despite being surrounded by people and events that routinely make normal insurance work impossible.

Her irritation with Vash initially comes from believing that his reckless behavior contributes to the chaos surrounding him. As she observes him more closely, she recognizes how deliberately he protects other people and how much suffering lies beneath his foolish public persona.

Meryl is compassionate despite her stern exterior. She becomes personally invested in Vash's well-being and increasingly unwilling to treat the disasters surrounding him as nothing more than insurance cases.

Meryl is a skilled handgun user despite not being a frontline fighter on Vash or Wolfwood's level. In the original continuity, she conceals numerous small derringer pistols beneath her cloak and can draw them rapidly when threatened.

Her greater strengths are judgment, persistence and courage. Meryl repeatedly continues her investigation in situations where an ordinary insurance agent would have every reason to retreat.

Trigun Stampede substantially reworks her role. There, she begins as a 23-year-old rookie reporter for the Bernardelli News Agency rather than an insurance investigator and travels with veteran journalist Roberto De Niro.

Meryl serves as one of the principal viewpoints through which Vash's reputation is dismantled. Her original assignment is to investigate claims linked to him, but the work becomes increasingly personal as she witnesses the gulf between the legendary destroyer and the man trying desperately to save people.

The 1998 anime and manga develop her alongside Milly, while Stampede replaces that initial partnership with Roberto. After Roberto's death in Stampede, Meryl continues as a reporter, and the ending sets up Milly as her future junior colleague.

The original anime develops Meryl's romantic feelings for Vash more explicitly than the manga. The claim that she is literally Rem's reincarnation is not established canon; visual and thematic parallels should not be treated as a confirmed identity.

Vash the Stampede is initially the subject of Meryl's assignment. Her skepticism develops into trust, concern and, particularly in the 1998 anime, romantic affection.

Milly Thompson is Meryl's junior colleague and closest traveling partner in the manga and 1998 anime.

Roberto De Niro is Meryl's senior colleague and mentor in Trigun Stampede. His death during the July incident has a lasting effect on her development as a journalist.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood travels with Meryl's group and becomes an important, if sometimes frustrating, ally.