- "We are the punishing rangers! The Handsome Men!"
- —The Handsome Men
The Handsome Men (ハンサムマン, Hansamuman) are a nine-man assassination group in killer7. They are an intentional parody of the Japanese "sentai" superhero genre, whose stories focus on groups of fighters in brightly colored, form-fitting uniforms.
Members[]
- Handsome Red
- Handsome Blue
- Handsome Light Brown
- Handsome Dead
- Handsome Purple
- Handsome White Pearl
- Handsome Pink (LOVE Wilcox)
- Handsome Gold
- Handsome Black
Almost every member takes the name of their uniform's color. Although most sentai series restrict their characters to more conventional, cardinal colors, the Handsome Men have a few of these and a number of unconventional ones as well.
In spite of their name, the Handsome Men has two female members, Handsome Light Brown and Handsome Pink.
Handsome Red appears to be the leader and frontman of the group, although he is the first one to be killed.
Story[]
According to Christopher Mills, the Handsome Men were developed by the US military in order to combat the global Heaven Smile threat. In addition to being an official assassin organization, the Handsome Men are also featured as characters in a comic book created by Trevor Pearlharbor and published by ZTT Comics. When the real-world group appears and begins to carry out the stories he writes in reality, Pearlharbor believes himself to be controlling them; in actuality, he is only a seer, and his comics are simply predictions of what they will do. LOVE Wilcox, a teenage girl and participant in the underground Internet, may be the actual coordinator of the Handsome Men's actions.
The Handsome Men appear in Target04: Alter Ego. A television news announcement reports that a group resembling the comic book characters has assassinated Democratic Party member Steve Thunderson during a meeting of Congress. As a result, Mills dispatches the killer7 to kill Pearlharbor, who is writing their adventures into his comics in the week preceding their actual actions, and therefore appears to be controlling them, or at least some sort of terrorist. The killer7 tracks Pearlharbor to his studio in the Dominican Republic, where he is in the midst of drawing a scene of himself killing Dan Smith, and thus believes he cannot die. However, Handsome Black suddenly appears and fires his Handsome Wink at Dan, who successfully dodges; the attack hits Pearlharbor, killing him.
Dan kills Handsome Black in retaliation; Handsome Red appears on the scene and, surveying it, concludes that Dan killed both Pearlharbor and Black unprovoked. He calls for a revenge match to determine which of the groups is stronger, naming Broadway, New York as the site of the challenge. A series of one-on-one matches ensues:
- Harman Smith kills Handsome Red with his rifle.
- Handsome White Pearl outshoots Con Smith.
- Coyote Smith shoots and kills Handsome Gold.
- Handsome Light Brown shoots KAEDE Smith as she reloads.
- Handsome Dead beats Kevin Smith when his knife throws miss.
- Dan Smith shoots Handsome Blue in the head.
- Handsome Purple seemingly defeats MASK de Smith, but the latter is suddenly reborn in a more stylized luchador outfit and with more powerful, faster-firing grenade launchers, and kills Purple with a charged shot.
As Garcian Smith is about to fight Handsome Pink, however, she suddenly transforms into LOVE Wilcox, and the two call a truce. She tells him that she "wrote the story," and seems to believe that the company she works for, Electro and Line, Inc., was responsible for her mentor Pearlharbor's death.
16-bit credits then roll, followed by a shot of Kun Lan's hand reaching towards the screen, possibly implying that the player has just played a competitive multiplayer game against Kun Lan over the Internet. Hand in killer7 elaborates on this further, explaining that the Handsome Men on the Internet were the result of underground gamers training to eliminate the killer7 in a video game named "killer7". Although Kun Lan was seemingly manipulating the match, each Handsome Man was being played as by a professional gamer, with LOVE Wilcox playing as Handsome Pink.
Powers and abilities[]
Handsome Black displays the Handsome Wink special attack, a beam of destructive energy. Additionally, each member takes on the particular weapon and associated abilities of the member of the killer7 whom they fight.
Trivia[]
- The production of the comic book, with a weekly publication schedule and Pearlharbor handling both words and art, is more similar to Japanese manga practice than that of American comic books, which are usually published monthly and with words and art created by different people.
- The No More Heroes character Destroyman attacks the same way as the Handsome Men - he yells "Destroy!" before his attacks, just as the Handsome Men yell out "Handsome!"
- The top button on the "ISZK Beverage vending machine" displays a "Handsomeman Executive Cola" choice.