Puria Richardson is a fifteen-year-old member of the Daiku Maryu's crew, assigned crew number twenty-three, who serves as the pilot of the multi-purpose fighter craft known as the Stinger, later upgraded into the Superior Stinger. She has a lightly tanned complexion, shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes, and is almost always seen wearing a red bandana.

Her personal history is marked by tragedy: when she was a small child, her father was killed by the Darius forces. This loss gives her a deep personal grudge against the enemy and a strong motivation to fight alongside the Daiku Maryu crew in their campaign against Darius. Despite this painful background, she carries herself as an energetic, confident, and assertive young woman with a spirited, big-sisterly personality that tends to dominate the people around her.

She is strong-willed and fierce, with a temper that can flare when she is provoked, but she also possesses considerable discipline. Her physical ability is notable even among the crew; she is strong enough to defeat Daiya, whose athletic skills surpass high school track records, in an arm wrestling contest without losing a single round. Later in the series, however, Daiya improves to the point where he wins roughly six out of ten matches against her. In combat she is levelheaded and pragmatic, sometimes to a cold degree. She prefers to destroy enemy beasts before they can grow into their full, more dangerous forms, a tactic that draws criticism from Daiya, who believes the creatures should not yet be treated as completely lost to Darius's influence. Though her painful past can make her emotional, she rarely lets anger cloud her judgment during a fight.

Her role on the Daiku Maryu is primarily that of a fighter pilot providing aerial support and cooperating with Gaiking during battles. She was also considered a candidate to pilot Gaiking itself, but that role ultimately went to Daiya, and this becomes a source of friction between them. Early on, she is openly hostile toward the newly chosen pilot, engaging in petty and spiteful harassment, but she gradually comes to respect and accept him as his ability and character prove themselves. A long-running point of irritation between them is that Daiya cannot remember her name correctly and calls her Richard-san, which enrages her every time.

Her relationships with other crew members develop as well. She initially looks down on Naoto, Daiya's best friend, because of his timid and weak-willed personality, but she later revises her opinion of him as he shows his strengths. In the epilogue, set five years after the main events, the two have become close in a way that suggests a romantic relationship.

Over the course of the story she matures from a prickly, confrontational rival into a dependable comrade who stands firmly with the rest of the crew. The epilogue also shows her grown up into a taller young woman with longer hair and a more mature figure, though by that time her physical strength no longer matches Daiya's, and she is comically mistaken for a thug and thrown into the sea. Another early comedic incident involves circumstances that force Daiya to remove all of her clothing, leading him to remark that her chest is not even half the size of Shizuka's, indicating that she has a modest figure.

Her notable abilities include skilled piloting of the Stinger, extraordinary physical strength and coordination, and a tactical composure that keeps her effective under pressure. Away from the battlefield, she is also known among the crew as a disastrously poor cook, a trait that is played for humor in the show's short comedy segments.