Ban

About Ban

Ban is the Fox's Sin of Greed, an immortal bandit who cannot die, cannot stay drunk and cannot forget the fairy who gave him her life. Locked in prison for years because dying was the only entertainment left, he joins the Sins' reunion with a grin and spends the series trying to bring Elaine back. Funny, selfish and secretly the most romantic man in Britannia, Ban steals every scene he is in, which he would say is only fair.

Appearance

Ban is tall and lean with spiky pale blue hair, red eyes and a lazy grin, usually dressed in a red leather jacket and trousers he wears like a uniform. A long scar runs down the left side of his face and neck, the one wound Meliodas ever gave him that would not heal, which he keeps with something like pride. He moves like a man with nowhere to be and nothing to fear, slouching, sprawling and stealing food off other people's plates. The design sells his immortality: he looks like a bored young delinquent, and only his eyes, and that scar, suggest the decades underneath.

Personality

Ban is greedy in the specific way of a man who has lost everything once: he grabs at pleasure, food, drink and other people's property because permanence is a joke to someone who will outlive it all. Under the act he is fiercely loyal and startlingly selfless where it counts, giving away his immortality without hesitation when the story demands it. His love for Elaine is total and uncomplicated, the centre of his life for decades of solitude. He teases Meliodas, terrorises Hawk and charms audiences, but the series keeps showing the bill for his curse: everyone he loves ages, and he does not.

Background & Story

Ban grew up starving in the slums of Ravens, abused and thieving to survive, until the were fox bandit Zhivago taught him to steal properly and became the father he never had. As a young bandit he climbed the Fairy King's Forest to steal the Fountain of Youth for its immortality, and met its guardian saint, Elaine. In seven days they fell in love; when a demon burned the forest, Elaine gave him the drink herself and died in his arms. Framed for her death and the forest's destruction, he became the Sin of Greed, let himself be captured and executed repeatedly for entertainment, and sat in Baste Dungeon until Meliodas came to collect him. His whole story after that is one long attempt to repay her gift. Prison suited him, in his own telling, because execution days were the only appointment in an immortal's diary, and the anime opens his story with him strolling out of Baste Dungeon mid execution order, refreshed. His cooking, a genuine gift, becomes his place in the Boar Hat family, and his theft based fighting style keeps even god tier battles playful: Ban steals strength the way other men draw swords.

Powers & Abilities

• Immortality: The Fountain of Youth stopped his ageing and heals any wound, up to being torn apart. He cannot be killed by injury, poison or time, which shapes how he fights and how he lives.
• Snatch: Ban's magic steals: objects, strength, speed and even organs, taken from a distance. Fighting him means getting weaker while he gets stronger, which is why even Meliodas respects it.
• Master thief and fighter: Decades of banditry made him one of Britannia's best hand to hand fighters and escape artists. Prisons hold him only because he lets them, for the quiet.

Key Relationships

• Elaine: The fairy saint who saved his life with the Fountain of Youth and died doing it. Ban's love for her survives decades, death and her brother's hatred, and drives his every storyline.
• Meliodas: His captain and best friend. The two fight like brothers, arm wrestle towns flat and trust each other with the worst truths in the series.
• King Harlequin: Elaine's brother, who blames Ban for her death. Their long, bitter feud, and what grows from it, is one of the show's best slow burns.
• Jericho: The young Holy Knight who falls for him during the Vaizel arc. Ban treats her kindly and never returns it, and the series handles her heartbreak with unusual honesty.
• Zhivago: The bandit who raised him. Ban's reunion with the old fox, and what it costs, gives him the most quietly devastating episode in the first two seasons.

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