#extra nerdy

(How it feels to explain anything knowing no one would listen.)

So, what even is a Gear? 

And why is it guilty? 

Gears are augmented beings. Originally 

intended to speed up our biological advancement—and cure disease along the way—the military naturally gravitated toward Gears to use as weapons of war.

Keep in mind, this is a story told across decades of arcade and console games, manga, Japanese drama CDs, literal pachinko machines—it’s a wild ride. But before we get into each character, we must first set the stage.

In 1999, an unknown entity named the Universal Will attempted to materialize itself through the world’s technology. All technology became dubbed as “Black Tech” and banned; however, humanity came to replace tech with magic taught to them by five suddenly appearing apostles. 

As magic integrated itself into society over the years, three scientists utilized it to work together on the Gear Project: Frederick Bulsara, Aria Hale, and That Man (later revealed as Asuka R. Kreutz). Two lovers and their enigmatic friend.

Aria got sick, so Frederick and That Man tried (and failed) to cure her. She rejected cryosleep because she wouldn’t be able to see Frederick again, but That Man refused to accept Aria’s loss. Without consent, he turned Frederick into a Gear—the Prototype Gear—to grant him immortality. 

He then preserved what remained of Aria by turning her into a Gear, as well. Frederick awoke with That Man and Aria nowhere to be found. Once he realized what happened to him, he escaped the lab. 

He developed a headband to suppress the Gear cells in his body, hiding his true identity, and vowed vengeance on That Man.

Once Frederick Bulsara is reported dead, he adopts the name Sol Badguy. 

Thanks to the Gear cells in his body, Sol no longer ages. He uses his immortality to become a bounty hunter, aiming to kill all Gears and get revenge on That Man, the Gear Maker himself.

Alongside the US government, That Man turns what’s left of Aria into Justice—a Gear to command all other Gears. Sol hears the news and develops the Outage, a superweapon too powerful for any one person to wield. Sol splits it into eight parts called the Sacred Treasures and scatters them around the world. Soon after Justice is formed, the Universal Will invades her body. 

She hovers over Japan and declares war on humanity, taking control of every Gear in the world. What follows is a 100-year war known as The Crusades, which eventually pushes Sol to join the Sacred Order of Holy Knights. This is where his rivalry with Ky Kiske begins.

Sol was far too brash and uncooperative to function in such a power structure for long—he’s used to the lone-wolf life of a bounty hunter, not taking orders from a superior. Sol abandons the Holy Order and steals the Sacred Treasure they kept, the Fireseal weapon, in order to defeat Justice and bring an end to the war. 

He weakens Justice enough for Ky and the Holy Order to seal her away in a dimensional prison.

The original Guilty Gear follows the story of Justice getting freed from her prison. Testament, a human-gear hybrid, organizes a tournament so he could use the bloodshed to release Justice. 

After her defeat, she reveals she’s born from Aria Hale’s remains, and Sol swears revenge on That Man for what he’s done to him and Aria.

Sol winds up chasing a bounty on Dizzy, a Gear with Justice-like abilities. Sol determines Dizzy isn’t a threat and leaves her to Ky. Dizzy and Ky eventually fall in love and have a son, Sin Kiske. 

To help Ky out of a bind, Sol agrees to take Sin under his wing at a young age. The two travel around hunting bounties for years until the capital of Illyria gets attacked by someone named Valentine.

Sol and Sin make their way back to the capital to find the city fallen and Ky stuck in a magical seal. Sol defeats Valentine and restores peace but for a moment. 

Ramlethal Valentine shows up not long after, declaring war on the world, and Sol is back to work. He fights Ramlethal and she gets captured, but her presence was a diversion. The Conclave, a shady Senate of four sages, destroys the city of Babylon while everyone’s distracted by Ramlethal. 

Once Ramlethal reveals the Conclave’s plan to revive Justice in the Illyrian capital, Sol prevents her resurrection with the help of That Man (!), but the Conclave escapes.

The Universal Will resurfaces, however, making herself known as Ariels—essentially Guilty Gear’s version of the Pope—and works to revive Justice herself. 

Sol fights Ariels with support from most of the playable Strive cast, and emerges with what appears to be a revived Aria.

Still, Sol has a score to settle with That Man, and Strive begins with That Man turning himself in to the authorities.

KY KISKE

Ky Kiske is the First King of Illyria and a good-boy foil to Sol’s bad-guy caricature. Ky has “Hope” etched into his belt, and there’s no better word for what he stands for. 

Having lost his mother at a young age, the child sought to join the Holy Order during the Crusades and discovers an aptitude for combat. 

An absolute prodigy with the blade, Ky goes on to become the Order’s leader by the age of 16, and is given the Thunderseal sword, one of the components for Sol’s Outrage weapon, that amplifies his skill with lightning magic.

Ky leads the front that ends the war and joins the UN’s International Police Force (IPF) to help monitor world peace. Eventually promoted to Chief, he develops from a commander known for relentlessly murdering Gears into a King with a soft spot for them. 

He eventually encounters Dizzy, a Gear with Justice-like abilities—the final boss of Guilty Gear X—but decides she isn’t a threat. 

Ky and Dizzy fall in love; however, their relationship must be hidden to protect Ky’s reputation. After they have a son, Sin Kiske, Ky gets blackmailed by the Conclave, a shady four-person Senate secretly plotting to revive Justice. 

They know about Dizzy and Sin, and they want Ky to be king. Sin is entrusted to Sol to help keep Ky’s relationship with Gears hidden from the people, and Ky becomes the First King of Illyria.

Years go by before Sol and Sin return to the Illyrian capital only to find the city falling to an attack by Valentine, a genetic copy of Aria Hale created by the Universal Will. 

Sol and Sin find Ky magically frozen inside the castle. Once freed, Ky plans the assault that takes down Valentine, thanks to Sol’s execution.

Before Ramlethal Valentine, sister to the original Valentine, declares war on the world, Ky gets a visit. A third sister, Elphelt Valentine, appears before him to warn about the coming disaster. 

She’s locked up for safety concerns, but her wise words come true when Ramlethal appears above Japan.

After Ramlethal is captured, she comes clean about the Conclave’s plans to revive Justice from inside the Illyrian city. 

Ky orders an immediate evacuation from the capital and goes on to defend the control room during the fight with the Conclave. He ends up getting ambushed and shot by Axus, a Conclave member; however, Ky’s eye turns red, preventing his death and showing an unknown side of Ky’s abilities before killing Axus.

Ky then investigates the Opera House, an old Conclave hideout. There he meets Potemkin and Chipp, and it’s revealed that the Universal Will could be a human named Ariels. Ky goes on to confront Ariels alongside Sol, Sin and company, and prevents her from reviving Justice. 

Ky publicly announces his intentions for peace between humans and Gears, and invites Ramlethal and Elphelt to come stay at the castle with Dizzy, Sin, and himself.

Ky and Sol maintain their rivalry, and in the middle of a duel, they receive information that That Man has turned himself in. This is where Strive starts for Ky.

MAY

May is Japanese, a big deal in the Guilty Gear universe. Japanese people are the most adept with Ki magic, the most mysterious magical element, and the primary reason why Justice targets Japan when she the Crusades began. May, orphaned by the attack, doesn’t remember much from her childhood before Johnny, captain of the Jellyfish Pirates, saves her. 

Named after the month in which she was discovered, May finds family in the Jellyfish crew. When Johnny gets caught stealing from the rich and thrown into jail, May tries to break him out. In the first Guilty Gear game, May catches wind about a tournament where the victor gets any one wish granted, so she attends in order to use the wish to bring Johnny back.

Johnny ends up breaking himself out of jail, however, and May hunts down Dizzy to collect the bounty on her head to afford a present for Johnny. When May and Dizzy meet, they actually get along and Dizzy ends up joining the Jellyfish Pirates. May eventually runs into Anji Mito on her travels, who sniffs out her Japanese heritage, but May still struggles to get any clear insight into her past.

Dizzy ends up falling off the ship, so May goes off to find her. Once Dizzy’s found and brought back, May presses Johnny for answers about her past but gets nothing out of him. Johnny ends up disappearing once again, so May leaves Dizzy with Ky so she can go search. May starts to come down with a sickness, however, and starts to get constant migraines. 

A reappearing Johnny disappears once more to seek Faust’s help.

After Ramlethal declares war on humanity, May takes it upon herself to fight her. When the two meet they discuss how humanity views Ramlethal as a monster for simply existing, and May runs away in an emotional response. Chipp shows up out of nowhere, as a ninja does, and saves her from a collapsing bridge, bringing her back to her crew just in time for Faust to show up with the cure for her headaches.

May eventually ventures to the Japanese colony with Johnny and Faust to meet up with Haehyun, a renowned Japanese master of Ki magic, to investigate strange local happenings. 

May meets Baiken, a Japanese swordswoman with one arm and one eye, and they team up to defend Haehyun during the final showdown. Ariels, the Universal Will’s human form, commands her forces to attack the colony during the final fight as Sol, Ky, and most of the playable Strive cast take on Ariels herself.

Her Japanese heritage is surely a variable as to why she can wield such a heavy weapon as a ship’s anchor, and her command over water life hints towards an affinity for water magic. May’s foggy history is what makes her so interesting, so who knows what Strive will reveal about her.

AXL LOW

Axl’s kind of just a guy? Axl Low’s from 20th century London (East End), before magic was ever taught to humanity, and he abhors violence as it permeated his environment since childhood. 

He eventually cleans up his neighborhood, peacefully; however, he gets thrust through a moment of time travel and slips into a world 200 years in the future.

Axl’s entire motivation through most of Guilty Gear’s story is to find a way to return back to his original time so he can reunite with his long-lost love, Megumi. 

This drive leads him to participate in the first Guilty Gear tournament as the victor was said to win one wish—his ticket home. When he realizes the tournament was all a ruse just to release Justice, he uncontrollably slips through time yet again. 

Axl meets Anji Mito in whatever this time is, and learns about That Man’s abilities to travel across the ages. He starts to investigate That Man’s whereabouts, which brings him to meet Faust. 

He diagnoses Axl with a time slipping disease, saying it’s caused by someone else sharing his identity. That person is I-No, a chaotic time traveler and boss of Guilty Gear XX. Her entire existence is inextricably linked to Axl’s.

Meeting I-No didn’t get Axl very far, but he goes on to find That Man and his accomplice, Raven, and discovers Raven’s to blame for his random time traveling. 

Axl then goes on a pretty wild series of time slippages, running into the Crusades, a man named Crow who tries to kidnap him, and multiple battles. He eventually encounters a world where he’s contacted by an omnipresent voice who refers to himself as The Original—the person who first discovered the extra-dimensional Backyard. 

They request Axl to deliver a message to That Man, and Axl slips through time once again to find himself in the dream realm of Bedman. The dream world and the Backyard are somehow related, making Bedman’s power incomprehensible here.

Bedman turns out to be working for Ariels, and plans to cause a mass extinction by blurring the lines between the Backyard and reality. He nearly kills Axl, but I-No appears and saves him, chucking him back through time. After a bit of cat and mouse chasing I-No, she helps him realize the true weight of his situation. 

If Axl were to return to his original timeline, it would essentially destroy the current one. While I-No helps Axl accept the power he has, he continues to play a passive role because he’s scared of the implications of his own abilities. 

Paralyzed with indecision, he seeks out Bedman, peacefully, to talk about how he came to accept the consequences of his incredible power.

Eventually Axl comes through, sacrificing his old life for the preservation of the present. He stops time—”One Vision,” a new ability added to his move set in Strive—giving Sol enough time to prevent Justice’s revival and defeat Ariels.

CHIPP ZANUFF

Chipp came up as an orphan in the streets of America. He was young when he got addicted to drugs, leading to an involvement with the mafia. He bails after the mafia attempts to murder him, and while on the run meets Tsuyoshi, a ninja master and Ki user who becomes Chipp’s sensei. 

Tsuyoshi helps Chipp get off drugs and trains him for years, but never tells Chipp about his history with the International Police Force (IPF). The Assassin’s Guild eventually finds and murders Tsuyoshi for having infiltrated their ranks as an IPF officer, leaving Chipp masterless. Chipp enters the tournament in the first Guilty Gear game with plans to use the wish he’d win to avenge his fallen master.

As the tournament comes to an end, Chipp realizes the folly of his efforts in a rigged tournament and leaves to train himself in seclusion. 

He pursues the bounty on Dizzy’s head to test his abilities, but quickly shifts his attention to the Assassin’s Guild as he notices a weakness in the guild. He defeats Zato=1, but spares the guild’s leader, Venom. Chipp realizes that achieving vengeance wouldn’t help anything and invites Venom to accompany him on his journeys. And then?

Chipp develops aspirations to become President.

Zepp, an independent colony living on a gigantic flying airship, is the only place holding elections, so Chipp heads there. He meets Potemkin and agrees to be a bodyguard for the current president, Gabriel. 

Over time, Gabriel and the US President, Erica, form an alliance to pass a law that removes all government ties to the Assassin’s Guild. Chipp saves Erica’s life from an assassination attempt and becomes her bodyguard to protect her until the law passes.

Chipp eventually leaves Erica and stumbles upon an area in South Africa ravaged by a lack of post-war aid—a region of folk who succumbed to lawlessness since the Crusades. 

Chipp cleans up the place, establishes a sense of order, and thus the Eastern Chipp Kingdom was born. Chipp is elected President and recruits a staff with Answer, the “Human Database,” as his personal assistant.

When Ramlethal Valentine appears to declare war on the world, Chipp seeks to take care of her to legitimize his country in the eyes of the UN. Ky rejects Chipp’s proposal, but Chipp travels to the Japanese colony and meets May. 

They confront Ramlethal, but May runs away. Chipp finds her, saves her from a collapsing bridge, and brings her back to her group.

Having questions about the Conclave, a shady four-person Senate, Chipp’s curiosity leads him to the Opera House. 

He discovers documents that point to Ariels’ influence over the Conclave, and Answer digs into them to discover that Ariels is the Universal Will incarnate.

Chipp infiltrates Zepp and gets President Gabriel to agree to assist their forces in the battle against Ariels. From there, Chipp stays on the ground with most of Strive’s playable cast defending the Illyrian city while Sol, Ky, and Sin battle Ariels in the sky up above.

POTEMKIN

Potemkin was raised in Zepp, a floating military state born from the rubble of the Crusades. 

Zepp rejects magic’s prominence in life with technology was banned, so their city stays airborne on a massive ship to avoid the meddling of countries below. 

Potemkin’s genetic mutation is to blame for his absurdly bulky figure, granting him a unique advantage that scared friends and foe alike. Under Zepp’s rule, Potemkin’s humanity is stifled by being forced to wear an anti-bomb collar.

Zepp finds a place for Potemkin, though, and he’s ordered to participate in the first Guilty Gear game’s tournament. 

He’s to use the one wish awarded to the victor as a means to expand Zepp’s territory and influence. Once Potemkin realizes there is no wish, just a plot to revive Justice, he gets furious and turns on Sergeant Gabriel. Honest Gabe informs Potemkin he was secretly selected as a key soldier in a rebellion plot to take over Zepp. Eliminating the corrupted hierarchy of the Empire would lead to a more peaceful, democratic state, so Potemkin agrees to the offer. 

Pot’s a big boy, but he uses his strengths as a violent means to a non-violent end. He’s a lovable lug. Gabriel promptly removes his anti-bomb collar.

Potemkin is later sent to retrieve Dizzy when a bounty is placed on her head, thinking she’d fare far better up in Zepp. 

Dizzy ends up going along with the Jellyfish Pirates, and Potemkin returns to Zepp to protect the city’s peace. Once Ramlethal declares war on the world, however, Potemkin receives orders to scout the area in Japan where Ramlethal was last seen. Along the way, he encounters Bedman, a mysterious meddler, who keeps Potemkin from reaching Ramlethal’s location by putting him in a dream state for three days. 

After Ramlethal’s capture and Babylon’s destruction, now President Gabriel (previously Sergeant) captures Bedman and works with Potemkin to interrogate him. Bedman remains comatose, however, eventually teleporting away.

Gabriel orders Potemkin to investigate the Opera House. 

He uses this time to go on a reflective journey as he re-learns to trust in his own abilities after his recent failures. He runs into King Ky there, alone, and has a heart to heart with him. The two agree to be an eternal source of hope to help humanity stand up in the face of the unknown. 

They encounter Chipp who informs them about Ariels’ true identity.

During the final showdown with Ariels, Potemkin helps the effort on the ground to keep the gigantic Gears from destroying the Illyrian city while Sol, Ky, and Sin confront Ariels on the platform in the sky above.

FAUST

Faust, originally “Dr. Baldhead,” claims the tile as best surgeon in the land. Hailing from China, Dr. Baldhead goes insane after Zato=1, then leader of the Assassin’s Guild, secretly kills one of his patients. 

Thinking it was his own fault and unable to detect what went wrong, Dr. Baldhead goes on a murderous rampage. He’s caught and imprisoned, but Testament, a human-gear hybrid, one day appears outside of Dr. Baldhead’s cell. 

Testament gives him the giant scalpel he fights with in-game, and tells him he has patients waiting for him.

After his escape, the doctor participates in the tournament Testament set up to revive Justice. Realizing it’s a sham, the torment of his past is all that remained. Before he could take his own life, however, Dr. Baldhead learns that someone else was responsible for the girl dying. 

He re-commits himself to the ways of healing people, puts a paper bag over his head, and starts going by the name “Faust” to gain distance from the murderous psychopath he had become.

Once a bounty is placed on Dizzy’s head, Faust returns to The Grove to warn her. He had met the Gear there when caring for nearby villagers some time ago. 

From here, Faust’s story explores multiple timelines with multiple characters as he tries to rid them of their ailments. Slayer, an otherworldly vampire and founder of the Assassin’s Guild, appears to Faust one day as he’s working in downtown Illyria and tells him about the Conclave’s involvement in the botched surgery that drove him to madness. 

Faust takes off to the Opera House to look for answers and runs into Zato=1, who confirms it was his doing. They fight, but Faust is no match for Zato=1 here. 

Faust’s life is spared, however, as they both seek to learn more about the Conclave.

Johnny, captain of the Jellyfish Pirates, seeks out Faust to cure May of her headaches. He immediately senses May’s Japanese blood, noticing a great power within her. 

Concerned with the health of the Japanese colony, Faust travels to Japan to unravel the strange activity. 

There he meets Haeyhun who tells Faust about the residents’ sickness.

After meticulous research, Faust discovers a new “Antimatter” Gear made from Japanese people, and develops an injection to prevent the self-destruction that follows their creation. During the battle with Ariels, Faust remains on the ground injecting huge gears with his new solution, preventing their explosions. 

With support from most of the playable cast in Strive, Faust helps protect the city as Sol, Ky, and Sin fight Ariels on a floating platform up above.

No one knows why Faust is so damn creepy or how he got his extra-dimensional powers, but I have no doubt Strive will shed a little more light on it.

ZATO=1

Zato comes into the Assassin’s Guild from Spain. He doesn’t ascend the ranks like he wanted to, so he gives up his eyesight for the power to control his own shadow. 

Little did he know the process actually merges his body with Eddie, a Forbidden Beast developed by the Post-War Administration Bureau (PWAB) to combat Gears during the Crusades. Whoever’s able to host one inside their body must sacrifice something in return for the awesome power.

After Slayer, the guild’s founder, left, Zato climbs the ranks to leader and establishes a romantic relationship with fellow guild member, Millia Rage. 

Zato steers the guild into contracts with money as motivation, leading them to assassinate a Duke. Millia gets kidnapped by the PWAB, but it’s not long before Slayer frees her. Without knowing Millia was saved, Zato agrees to kill a two-year-old King for the PWAB in order to get her back. 

In the throne room, Millia shows up to protect the child and stabs Zato in the process. He escapes and meets with Slayer as the pair get attacked by the PWAB, but Millia and Venom show up to save them both.

Zato forgives Millia, but the guild goes downhill. Zato tries to kill Dr. Baldhead but accidentally kills his patient, and Millia betrays Zato and runs away. 

The remaining guild members can’t endure the chaos from Millia’s departure, leading to Zato’s arrest and confinement. Testament appears to Zato in his prison and informs him about the upcoming tournament he’s hosting. 

In the first Guilty Gear game, Zato escapes his prison to win the tournament’s reward: a single wish, all he needs for vengeance.

By the end of the tournament, however, Zato’s body becomes too weak to maintain control over his shadow. Now Eddie commands Zato. Despite Zato’s constant inner battle with Eddie for control over his own body, Zato seeks out Dizzy to collect the bounty on her head. 

They encounter Millia near Dizzy’s location and fight. She murders Zato and dips, but Eddie reanimates his body to keep his host alive. At this point, his in-game name is no longer Zato: it’s Eddie.

Eddie travels around looking for another host as Zato’s body will eventually give out. Despite his attempts, he loses energy and dies. 

The Conclave collects Zato’s remains an, over the course of six years, resurrect both Zato and Eddie, confining them in a dimensional prison.

Now functioning as a cooperative unit, Zato and Eddie escape their prison and head to the Opera House and find Slayer there. They learn their revival was a test run for resurrecting Justice, but Faust shows up seeking answers and picks a fight with Zato. In search of his own truth, Zato spares Faust and tells him what he knows about the Conclave.

Zato then relays the Conclave’s plans to Sol and Ky, helping them prevent Justice’s return.

Once Ariels is identified as the Universal Will, the Illyrian government hires the Assassin’s Guild to help. Zato and company help defend the Illyrian city on the ground during the final showdown as Sol, Ky, and Sin fight Ariels on a floating platform up above.

RAMLETHAL VALENTINE

Originally very robotic and anti-emotional, Ramlethal Valentine introduces herself to the world by declaring war on it. She is one of the four Valentine sisters alongside Elphelt, Jack-O’, and Valentine herself—all made from the remnants of Aria Hale. 

Each of them refers to Ariels as “Mother,” and they live to serve her. Ramlethal views herself as a tool to Mother. Nothing more. 

Unable to question the orders she’s given, Ramlethal’s declaration of war affords the Conclave the chance to obliterate the city of Babylon. As Sol, Ky, and company capture Ramlethal, the Cradle, a floating megastructure containing Justice’s body, suddenly appears above the city and wipes out everything around it.

With her job complete, Ramlethal attempts to blow herself up in order to take out Sol, Ky, and crew, but her sister Elphelt appears and restricts Ramlethal’s power, preventing her explosion. 

Once taken into custody, Ramlethal starts to bond with Elphelt and Ky’s son, Sin, as they try to unearth any humanity lying latent within her. Elphelt tries to convince her she’s more than just Mother’s tool.

One of the strongest emotions she feels is when trying a hamburger for the first time. Sin gives her the magehound puppy seen in Ramlethal’s cinematic win screen in Strive, helping Ramlethal loosen up. She tells everyone about the Conclave’s plan to resurrect Justice.

As Sol and company deny the Conclave’s attempts, Elphelt’s true programming gets triggered. Her orders from Mother fool everyone, including Elphelt herself, into thinking she was “good.” Mother’s programming assumes control of any personality Elphelt had, turning her into an emotional husk. 

She starts to teleport away, and an oddly emotional Ramlethal tries to break through to her sister before she vanishes completely. Ramlethal’s words reach Elphelt in the way only a sibling’s could. Before disappearing, Elphelt shakes out of it enough to remember herself pre-activation. Sol, realizing the connection Elphelt and Ramlethal both have to Justice and, therefore, Aria, vows to save Elphelt.

With the help of That Man, Ramlethal and Sol go out to retrieve Jack-O’ Valentine, the last remaining sister and the one who bears the most striking resemblance to Aria. A signal for Elphelt’s location appears soon after, and Ramlethal goes to investigate. It’s a trap—she gets caught in the self-destruction blast from a massive Gear. 

She almost makes it out, but sacrifices herself for the life of a crying child in the street. Ramlethal calls Sin to tell him goodbye. Then, boom. She’s reported dead, but Raven, accomplice to That Man and previously a playable character in the series, saves her.

Ramlethal shows up at the end of the battle against Ariels and helps Sol defeat her mother, ultimately merging Jack-O’ with Justice to revive Aria in full. With Elphelt freed, the sisters return alongside Sin to Ky’s royal chambers to stay indefinitely.

LEO WHITEFANG

Leo had an unfathomable talent in combat from a young age. With such a background, he joins the Sacred Order of Holy Knights during the Crusades. 

He’s the Order’s best swordsman before Ky arrives, but Leo feels more inspired by Ky than demoralized. They become good friends before Leo gets stationed in Australia. From there he leads the charge to secure a vital location’s borders during the Crusades. 

Thanks to Leo’s leadership, his unit survives a hopeless encounter with death, adding more credence to his reputation. After Sol defeats Justice and the war ends, Leo becomes the Second King of Illyria (after Ky).

Leo’s mostly consumed by paperwork and kingly duties until Ramlethal declares war on the world. As the battle with Ramlethal rages on, Leo oversees the Illyrian war room as the city of Babylon gets destroyed. The Cradle appears above the city and instantly wipes out everything around it. Leo orders an immediate evacuation.

The Cradle reappears about a week later, this time above the Black Sea. Leo orders his troops to retreat, but they disobey and attack the Cradle anyway. 

Leo sends the footage of their demise to Ky, working with Zepp to confirm the Conclave’s involvement from the tapes. Leo and Ky release Dr. Paradigm, a peaceful, studious Gear who knows about the Cradle, and he helps everyone form a plan to ambush it. Leo oversees the whole shebang. When Bedman, a mysterious meddler, starts destroying the beacons used to locate the Cradle, Leo teams up with Johnny, captain of the Jellyfish Pirates, to fight him. 

This gives Sol and That Man enough time to break the defensive barrier protecting the Cradle, but nothing more—it disappears once again.

Once Ramlethal tells the group about the Conclave’s plans to revive Justice, Leo and Ky order an evacuation of the city. Leo stays behind to help guard the capital. 

After Ariels teleports away with Justice’s body, it’s back to paperwork and kingly duties for Leo. It’s certainly stacked up while he was away—so much so that there’s now a third Illyrian King, Daryl, who sweeps up while Ky and Leo are away.

After investigating a disturbance in the Japanese Colony, Leo helps retrieve Jack-O’ Valentine from That Man. 

Once Ariels reveals herself, Leo mans the war room to oversee the battle as Sol dukes it out with her til the end. King Daryl plans to fire missiles at their location if they take too long to defeat Ariels, and Leo does everything he can to protect Sol from Daryl’s decision. 

He even tries to have Daryl removed from his position as the Third King—but Ky refuses. Sol survives anyways, Ariels is defeated, and Jack-O’ merges with Justice to form what appears to be a resurrected Aria Hale.

Leo returns home to tend to a mountain of paperwork. Last we see Leo, he receives a call saying That Man has turned himself in for his past crimes.

ANJI MITO

Anji’s quite the mysterious one. He’s an impulsive Japanese adventurer who values freedom above all. After Justice destroys Japan, the few survivors who remained gather together to form the Japanese colony. Anji didn’t mesh well with the confinement of the Colony, so one day, well, he just left. 

On his way out he stole the Zessen Windfans, one of the components for Sol’s Outrage weapon and the source of the magical barrier protecting the Japanese colony. 

Anji quickly and quietly travels around in search of That Man, looking for nothing more than to satisfy his own curiosity.

As Anji evades the authorities trying to send him back to the village, he eventually meets up with Axl Low. Anji encounters Axl having slipped through time, and the two come to rendezvous in London time and time again to exchange information. 

One time, however, Anji goes to meet Axl and walks into the middle of an altercation between Tyr, Mizuha, and Geena, three characters from the Guilty Gear Xtra manga, and helps settle the matter at hand. Alongside Potemkin, Anji ends up taking Mizuha to Zepp so she can seek knowledge about her newly acquired powers.

Once the bounty on Dizzy’s head goes up, Anji goes to investigate. He somehow knows about Sol’s true identity and seeks him out along the way, hoping it will lead him closer to That Man.

Anji finally meets That Man and agrees to help him track down I-No, who had been getting out of control. It’s revealed that Anji and Baiken, the Japanese swordswoman with one eye and one arm, have a history together, causing some inner turmoil when he retains secrets about That Man from her. 

Despite the mental dilemma, he contacts Baiken and asks her to return to the Colony. She rejects the proposition but sniffs out that Anji’s already met That Man. Anji keeps her advances at bay, however, and she ends up agreeing to take care of the Colony.

With Anji being almost entirely removed from the series since his playable version in Guilty Gear XX, his inclusion in Striveis awfully surprising. Who knows what he’s learned in his absence.

I-NO

Born inadvertently from the human will for survival, I-No is the embodiment of humanity’s hope. 

After the Crusades begin, people’s hope for a better tomorrow becomes so intense that the Backyard, an extra-dimensional space dense with information, thinks it’s an error and expells humanity’s excess hope into a single discarded entity named I-No. Ejected by the Backyard, I-No has one prerogative: to achieve a better tomorrow.

Despite her immense power (she was the final boss in Guilty Gear XX), nothing she does seems to prevent the bleak, grey future that she keeps seeing. As I-No glitches into existence, she somehow disrupts the integrity of Axl Low’s existence, sharing the same identity with him. 

She also shares his powers of time travel, but she has much more control over it.

I-No’s a master of manipulation and loves to play with her food. She pops up randomly throughout nearly everyone’s travels and easily escapes any repercussions thanks to time travel. 

As she causes a ruckus through various timelines, like knocking Dizzy off the Mayship and handing out fake bounties for funsies, That Man starts to intervene to keep her in check. I-No eventually runs into Axl Low, and after a quick altercation comes to find out he has a message for That Man from The Original—the person who first discovered the Backyard. I-No sends Axl through time to meet That Man and relay the message, clueing That Man in on the Conclave’s plans.

On That Man’s orders, I-No goes to wake up Jack-O’ Valentine, but Jack-O’ doesn’t listen to I-No at all and runs off. I-No bumps into Axl while tracking down Jack-O’ and denies his requests for her to send him back to his original timeline. 

Jack-O’ appears before them both and lets them know the truth about themselves. After I-No says her goodbyes to Axl, she continues to watch over Jack-O’ until Sol and company come to retrieve her.

I-No and Axl later meet up once again, and she helps him wrestle with the implications of his own power. 

This conversation helps Axl make the decision to stay in this timeline to help defeat Ariels—without Axl’s interference, Sol wouldn’t have had the time to prevent Justice’s revival.

I-No leaves That Man’s side once all the hubbub is over. 

She hasn’t been seen until her appearance in Strive.

MILLIA RAGE

Like so many others, Millia lost her parents to the Crusades. Unlike so many others, she’s taken in by the Assassin’s Guild and, against her will, forced to merge with the Forbidden Beast, Angra—a biological Anti-Gear weapon developed during the Crusades. It lives in Millia’s hair, providing her extraordinary abilities; however, they demand a sacrifice. What Millia gave up isn’t perfectly clear, but after fighting Testament in the first Guilty Gear game, it’s revealed that she has no soul. How sus’.

The guild trains her to use her hair as a weapon from a young age, and she hates every moment of it. 

After multiple failed suicide attempts, Millia ends up forming a romantic relationship with Zato=1 as he ascends to lead the Assassin’s Guild. 

During a mission to assassinate a duke, Millia meets Slayer, an otherworldly vampire and founder of the Assassin’s Guild, who gives her hope for a better future. As Millia’s mission ends, she’s caught and thrown into a magically-sealed prison, but Slayer shows up to free her.

Millia learns that Zato’s assassinating a two-year-old king, so she heads there to stop him. She stabs Zato, takes the child, and flees. Millia later reappears alongside Venom, another guild member, to save Zato and Slayer from an overwhelming fight, but the guild starts to go downhill afterward. 

Millia flees the guild, causing such a ruckus that their sloppiness gets them caught, resulting in Zato’s arrest and imprisonment.

Millia’s on the run in the first Guilty Geargame. One day she overhears that Zato escaped his dimensional prison and intends to participate in an upcoming tournament, so Millia decides to attend. 

She could use the tournament’s reward, a single wish to make anything come true, to end Zato’s life and put a stop to the guild forever. 

Millia fights Zato and defeats him, but doesn’t kill him. Once the tournament’s found to be fraudulent, Millia returns to her fugitive lifestyle.

Millia later tracks down a powerful Gear named Dizzy with a bounty on her head, but it’s not the bounty she’s after. 

Unable to rest until Zato is dead, Millia knows he’s out there seeking money. Sure enough, Millia encounters him at The Grove near Dizzy’s location, kills him, and leaves.

The Conclave gathers Zato’s remains and resurrects him. Word reaches Millia and Venom, so Millia heads to the Opera House to investigate. There she finds Zato, and he forgives her for killing him. 

He shares the Conclave’s plans to revive Justice, then she goes to Ky to relay the information. From here, Millia strives to become the leader of the guild as the group rebuilds its reputation and collective values. 

She wants to make sure it’s a welcoming place for those who have nowhere to go.

Once Ariels reveals herself, the Illyrian government hires Millia and the guild to help defend the city during the final showdown.

GIOVANNA

Giovanna is one of two new characters introduced to the series in Strive, so not much is known about her at all. 

Rei, the wolf spirit accompanying her, seems tied to her hip, and they fight elegantly together. Giovanna’s from Brazil, but she protects the American president as a special forces officer. 

Gameplay is all we have to extract narrative from, and Giovanna’s kit offers a few glimpses of insight into her background.

Rei possesses Giovanna to strengthen her acrobatic fighting skills and speeds her up as she gains Tension throughout a fight. There aren’t any crazy dog-throwing attacks or magic missiles—everything Rei does is to accentuate Giovanna’s innate prowess in hand-to-hand combat. 

While Giovanna relies mostly on her feet to do her damage, the range of her move set can be deceptive as Rei extends the length of her legs when they attack together.

There remain so many questions about Giovanna. The last we’ve seen of the American President, she was passing a law to remove governmental ties to the Assassin’s Guild with Chipp’s help. 

Is there a new President now? 

Who among the cast does Giovanna know? 

Is Rei a Forbidden Beast?

I think so. I have nothing but my gut to offer as justification, and if she sacrificed something for Rei’s companionship, it’s not evident from her visual design (like Zato=1’s blindness). But I believe it in my heart.

Could she be anything else? 

She could be from another dimension, like the Backyard or wherever Slayer and Nagoriyuki’s from, but that’s about all we have to speculate on until Strive releases.

NAGORIYUKI

Nagoriyuki is one of the two new characters introduced to the series in Strive, so not much is known about him at all. 

All we know is that Nago is a vampire samurai, making him the only other playable vampire in the series (alongside Slayer from previous games). 

With Slayer as the only model for how powerful vampires are in Guilty Gear, Nago shares many of the same otherworldly quirks.

When Nago gets knocked down, he doesn’t fall down—he chooses to lie down mid-fight. Resuming a standing position has him rise from the ground, cross-armed, as a plank would emerge from a coffin. 

Nago’s immortality and supreme power are echoed in his weapon, a bloodsucking Ådachi that reinforces his blood gauge mechanic. 

As Nago uses his special moves, his thirst for blood goes up. Certain moves, like his vampiric bite command grab, reduces the gauge’s build-up, but once it’s full, Nago uncontrollably removes his helmet and transforms. 

While superpowered in this state, his health constantly drains until he puts his helmet back on.

Nago’s from Nigeria, and his nobility is noteworthy. His big frame is supported by a health-conscious mindset as one of his taunts displays how much Nago knows about the nutrients of the rice ball he’s eating. 

Combined with the aesthetic of old Japanese paintings like The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Nago seems like a mindful, patient individual, but we won’t know anything more about him until Strive releases.

———

In the early games, it was actually constantly hinted that That Man wasn’t fully evil or responsible for everything, just that he was stupidly annoyingly cryptic to the point it just pissed everyone off.

Plus there was this constant confusion over when something is referring to the original destruction of Japan; and when it’s referring to the destruction of Baiken and Anji’s Japanese colony, which is about 100 years later. It got so confusing that you still have people thinking Japanese people are immortal and that Baiken and Anji were born pre-Crusades and are 100+ years; but thankfully Another Story has Baiken say clearly it’s been 20 years since her colony’s destruction and the start of her revenge journey.

Anyway, in early GGX and XX, Anji seemed to have picked up that That Man’s supposed ‘evil’ motives didn’t make sense, or what actual purpose of Gears are, and finding all that out was his main motivator before he met Baiken again some time in GGXX. 

In one of the GGX endings, Baiken did finally get to fight That Man and got royally outclassed to the point she broke down; but That Man was sympathetic and hoped she could let go of revenge one day. So at this point, That Man was shown to not be ‘evil’, he didn’t kill anyone who challenged him AFAIK, and even offered Anji a place at his side like Raven and more knowledge. 

But it was implied he was responsible for the Japanese colony destruction as well, unless he was apologising to Baiken for the general destruction of Japan pre-Crusades.

I think this is the real dividing line between Xrd/Strive stories and the early games; where Daisuke decided that a sympathetic That Man being responsible not just for pre-Crusades Japan destruction but also the Japanese colony destruction was too much. 

It also brings up the issue that if the reason Japan had to be destroyed was cos of them mutating, then it implies even the current Japanese people are in danger of mutating and that was the main reason That Man destroyed the colonies again. 

It would fit in line with why he was apologetic to Baiken in that ending.

However, that prolly was too much of a can-of-worms to deal with, since that means all the Japanese cast have the potential to mutate? No colony is safe ever?

So the easiest solution - Happy Chaos did it, for shits and giggles, and somehow managed to make everyone believe it was Asuka/That Man and Asuka just never bothered to clarify ever until Xrd.

Ed's journey is one from selfishness to self-worth and self-knowledge, from pride in himself (and shame of his sins) to reliance on others, and from anger to acceptance. Underlying all of these is his core character trait of determination, which is sometimes threatened by his shame but ultimately survives everything, and allows him to turn his weaknesses into strengths.

Episodes 1-10 Beginnings

At the start of Ed's continuity, his most important traits are his selfishness, pride, anger, and determination.

1) His selfishness is what motivates him to perform the human transmutation. He wanted to "prove he could stand on his own," to symbolically replace his father by proving he could do better by their mother. His tool was inherited directly from his father--he uses his father's alchemy to do all his initial research.

2) His pride feeds into his selfishness nicely, as it's what lets him think it's acceptable for him to break the taboo and make the attempt in the first place. His response, on seeing what lies beyond the Gate for the first time, is to immediately demand Truth let him see more so he can do human transmutation again. And since pride and shame are closely linked, a lot of his pride quickly turns to shame.

3) His anger is most visible every time he imagines someone calls him short. This hits him right in his pride--he thinks of himself as the tallest man in the room, and being reminded in any way that he isn't makes him furious.

Ed's determination is ultimately his core character trait, but the journey there takes a long time. Pinko highlights his destination and how far he is from it in the manga, saying that he is a strong person, and she wonders what will happen to a strong person when they hit an obstacle their strength can't overcome.

Ed's journey to finding that enduring determination starts when he decides to become a state alchemist. He is buried in shame, but Mustang revives his pride enough for him to feel some sense of self-worth again, to have some hope. But the reason Ed becomes a state alchemist has nothing to do with the creed of, "be thou for the people," that is supposed to motivate alchemists. He explicitly links it to his selfishness--at one point in the manga, he explicitly says, "I don't care about my country." He is in this to get his brother his body back.

Al is what saves him from being purely selfish here, although there's a layer of selfishness and pride embedded in that relationship too. Ed does obviously care deeply for his brother, and he feels intense guilt about Al's loss of his body.

This guilt is partially justified--Ed's pride is what got them into this--but not to the degree he feels it. It becomes a part of his selfishness, that the loss of their bodies was all his and only his fault. Everything is about him. And there is a level in which Ed knows this--that's why what Shou Tucker said about them being the same gets to him.

He wonders if what he did to Al was as much a violation, as much a sin, as the result of his human transmutation, or what Tucker did to Nina.

We see his selfishness again when he and Al are defeated by Scar. Ed ignores Al telling him to run away or at least try to keep fighting, entirely ignores Al's feelings and opinions. Instead, he takes it all has to be about him, to the point that he demands Scar kill him as a sort of promise not to kill his brother. This is selfishness masquerading as self-sacrifice.

This all starts to change when Al accuses Ed of lying to him and making him up with alchemy. Ed, for the first time in a long time, actually seems directly angry at his brother. This is part of Ed moving back into seeing Al in a way that isn't dominated by his guilt.

It is around this time that Ed also starts to lean on other people. He draws on strength from his relationship with Al to survive the Fifth Laboratory. When he's beaten there, he doesn't give up, he gets up. When Maria berates him for cutting them out, Ed admits that she was right and he was wrong. He tells Hughes and Armstrong everything he knows.

He also starts to see the limits of alchemy during these early episodes. His inability to save Nina isn't just because of the limits of his alchemy. It's because he was so focused on finding a bigger alchemical stick to fix himself and his brother's bodies--so focused on his research--that he didn't pick up on Tucker's plans until it was too late. Tucker literally made the plan to transmute Nina in front of the brothers, and they didn't notice a thing.

Episodes 11-20: Beginning to Let Go of Pride and Shame

This is when we see Ed's relationships really start to shift. It's notable that Ed freaks out at Greed for saying almost exactly what Ed himself said in episode 9 about Al's body being great. His relationship with Izumi also shifts a lot, from one of a defensive student to an adult partnership. This is rooted in himself and Izumi recognizing their reflected selves in one another.

Each realizes the other has broken the taboo because the other does hand transmutations. Ed never made this connection before, but his self-awareness is growing.

Then, on their return to Central, the boys learn of the death of Hughes. Ed's reaction to this is immediate and intense self-centeredness and shame. "It's all my fault." He's returning to the old coping mechanism of taking all the responsibility on himself, producing shame (the reflection of pride). He seems baffled when Al insists that it wasn't just Ed who is responsible for Hughes's death. When he confesses to Gracia Hughes, he's clearly astonished at her reaction. He expects Gracia Hughes to hate him--but she doesn't. She knew her husband, and knew it was his choice to get involved--it wasn't just about Ed. This wasn't a one-sided relationship. Ed cared about Hughes, and Hughes cared about Ed.

Ed's reaction to the Maria Ross incident is to, again, fall back on anger. This actively gets in the way. Not that Mustang was likely to tell him anything before he started howling, but after that he definitely wasn't.

The result is that, in the desert, Ed manages to gain some real perspective. Once, he said that he didn't really care about anything but his quest. Now, he decides "I'll never let another person become a victim in this deadly game." It's not that he's going to lock everyone else out, and it's not that he's taking responsibility for everyone. It's focused on what kind of person he wants to be in the context of others.

Then, he demonstrates his increased understanding of how his pride can distort his worldview: "I know it's a big promise...maybe it's just my ego talking...maybe I'm just an idiot." It's a pretty dramatic change from his earlier comparisons of himself to god and mythical heroes.

This all sets him up well for his next test, meeting his father again. Hohenheim and Ed see all their flaws reflected in one another (Hohenheim's mistakes and their unintended consequences, Ed's desire to make up for his father's departure), and it doesn't go well. Hohenheim doesn't trust Ed with any information at all about what's really happening in Amestris.

He either feels to guilty or too angry to tell Ed directly that his human transmutation wouldn't have brought back their mother. Ed, because he's Ed, overhears him talking to Pinako. But he doesn't fall back on his old coping mechanisms of selfishness (which would have caused him to dismiss what Hohenheim said) or anger (he doesn't storm in and demand a fuller explanation from Hohenheim).

Instead, he decides to see for himself. Hohenheim accused him of running away, of refusing to deal with the reminder or consequences of his sin. He wasn't entirely correct--after Al, Al is a walking talking consequence--but he wasn't entirely incorrect.

Ed's reaction to learning that he failed at human transmutation, that his pride and certainty were false, is pure relief. He knows that he was arrogant, that his pride hurt people--but he didn't hurt his mother more. He didn't fuck up quite as badly as he thought he had. He is not the same as Shou Tucker. The shame isn't as endlessly deep as he thought it was, and that gives him hope.

Episodes 21-30 Self-knowledge and Endurance

Here's something that's not mentioned often enough: Ed never checked to make sure that Al was definitely really Al until episode 21. Not even when Al was wondering about it. Ed's on a journey back from his pride-oriented worldview. Even Ed admitting that he's short--without falling back on anger, no shouts about shrimp--is part of this.

Ed and Al also have a fantastic conversation in which Ed finally lets go of his selfishness-oriented view of the human transmutation. Al says straight out, this is something we did together. This is not all your fault.

These are also the episodes in which Ed's selfishness begins to ebb as a key motivator. He becomes increasingly involved in the main plot, joining forces with people he'd previously been antagonistic towards (he didn't like Ling, understandably, and he and Mustang are much too alike to ever really like each other).

As Ed's involvement deepens, so does the danger he's exposed to. This leads to him facing the peak of the challenge that Pinako foreshadowed in the manga: something so strong it overwhelms his own strength. The Truth. The gate.

When Ed sees Al's body again and is dragged away, he is at the peak of his alchemic strength. He just used a philosopher's stone for the first time. Al's body is in front of him. This is literally exactly where he set out to be at the start of his quest. And there is absolutely nothing he can do against the portal's hands, no way he can help Al. It momentarily overwhelms him, as he closes his eyes rather than watch Al vanish.

But he pulls it together. He finds something he can give Al after all: the strength of their bond, and a promise that it will endure.

The endurance of Ed's determination in the face of overwhelming strength is the key conflict of the ensuing set of episodes. There's nothing Ed can do to help Ling.

Father can take away his alchemy with careless ease. Wrath can baldly threaten Winry, and there's nothing Ed can do about it. This calls back deliberately to Hughes--Ed and Al appear to be calling Winry in episode 29 from the same phone booth Hughes died in.

Relationships make people vulnerable, they just do, and as Hughes died in part because Envy pretended to look like his wife, so now Ed and Al are restricted because of their relationship with Winry. But that relationship is not one sided. And, as the last line of the third opening song puts it, "What is it I don't want to let go of?" The answer is...

Episodes 31-40 Relationships

These are the episodes in which Ed's relationships really start to grow. His selfishness and pride are no longer so dominant, and he has developed stronger and stronger ties to people.

He is horrified at Mustang's and Hawkeye's suicide plan. In the manga, he openly says, "self-sacrifice is just self-gratification." He doesn't like Mustang enough to say what he does to Hawkeye (he yells at Hawkeye she deserves to be happy too, not just live for other people to be happy, he's such a sweetheart), but he makes it clear he is not okay with Mustang's suicide plan.

Once, he probably wouldn't have cared much either way.

He also manages to recognize that Gen. Armstrong is definitely someone he should not antagonize, not matter how openly provocative she is. This is a good survival instinct. But not only does he do that, he manages to turn Armstrong into a key ally.

Then Winry comes. This challenges Ed in a whole host of ways. First, there's the fact that all his previous coping mechanisms--pride, selfishness, and anger--are completely useless in the face of Kimblee's smug grin and Winry's vulnerability. Plus, he feels extra vulnerable himself because of what Hawkeye said about him loving Winry.

To get through this, Ed relies on Al. He has to trust that Al understands him when Kimblee is listening to them. Ed and Al also make the decision in this episode that, even knowing Al's body is waiting at the gate, the priority has to be saving the country and everyone in it. Their bodies have to wait. This is a huge act of self-denial, and kind of a big character development deal.

Ed also comes closer to accepting Winry as an equal partner in their relationship. Early on, he deliberately cut her off, refused to share information with her, and generally tried to keep her from knowing too much about what he and Al were going through. At Briggs, he insists to Kimblee that Winry be given as complete an understanding as possible in the circumstances--because, he sees, when she is directly involved she has the right to know.

Then, Ed is forced to accept Winry's decision to go off on her own, join the fight, and put herself in the incredibly vulnerable position of depending entirely on Scar. This is something that previous versions of Ed would have found entirely intolerable, and he's still not happy about it. It is, in fact, an inversion of his response to Hughes's death.

Then, his reaction was to take all the responsibility for Hughes's own actions on himself. Now, he has matured enough to see that a relationship is two-sided, and that he owes it to Winry to accept that she has responsibility for her own actions and reactions. So he accepts her decisions. And when Al goes out in a blizzard alone, he accepts that too.

Episodes 41-50 Learning Not to be the Protagonist All the Time

This is Ed dealing with having to be more reactive or passive. His relationships have grown to the point where he has no choice but to do this. He does so by leaning on his determination and starting to trust himself in different ways. Allowing others to share his responsibility means he has had to sacrifice his pride, which in turn means he has less shame, which again in turn lowers his anger.

So, what do I mean by, "trusting himself in different ways?" I mean the scene when Kimblee sends him into the rubble and he gets run through. Firstly, he's only able to survive that in the first place because of the chimeras.

He intervened to protect the chimeras from his own allies repeatedly, because of his core belief in the worth of human life. This linked up with his determination and the chimeras survived, later saving practically every major character. Secondly, he draws the strength to get up after collapsing from his relationship with Winry, a relationship with more depth than ever before.

Finally, he is able to rely on himself doing some experimental alchemy for the first time since his huge mistaken human transmutation. It's kind of a big deal that this doesn't blow up. He doesn't do it from a place of pride, though--he does it to compensate for his lack of knowledge of healing alchemy, and he knows the price beforehand.

Then, there's the scene when he allows the chimeras to pretend he's their hostage. Old Ed wouldn't have accepted this, and Ed now isn't too happy about it. But his anger doesn't get the better of him, as it once would have. He's still angry--he did take out both of the soldiers sent to get them himself after one called him short--but that anger is more directed. He really has fully recovered.

Next, there's Ed's meeting with Greedling. He agrees to become Greed's follower. This is literally him agreeing not to be the protagonist anymore. It actually directly inverts a scene in the manga in which, after Ed and Al fought Lanfan and Fu, Ling asked Ed to become his servant. Ed screamed at him to come back where he came from. But the way Ed talks to Greed, it really doesn't bother him anymore.

His pride no longer makes him think he always knows best. Ed's conversation with Winry, when she demands he tell her he'll win, also builds on this. Ed wanted her to go because he was scared she'd get hurt. That was what he needed--it was selfish. But he chooses to prioritize her needs, to reassure her when she asks.

The next day, he meets Hohenheim again. This results in Hohenheim finally telling him everything, and in Ed telling him their mother's last words. It's when Ed's relationship with Hohenheim starts to shift, as he sees his father cry. He's a human in pain, not a monster from Ed's childhood, the real reason Ed broke the taboo.

Finally, there's Ed accepting Al's decision to sit out the fight to stop Pride. This is, again, something that he absolutely does not want to do. But he an Al are now in an equal relationship, and sometimes one does something at risk to themselves that the other doesn't like. It can't all be Ed all the time.

Episodes 51-60 Support Role

Ed is one cog in a grand mechanism in these episodes, and he knows it. His job isn't even to do anything on the Promised Day: he's in a pure support role. He needs to keep Mustang from going nuts (a confrontation that, had it taken place at an earlier time, would absolutely have escalated). He has to help Scar get to the center to do his fancy alchemy. He has to run interference for May Chang and back Hohenheim up. He and Mustang bicker a bit, but otherwise he consistently comes through for people, even people he actively dislikes like Hohenheim.

Episodes 60-61 Weakness into Strength

Something that comes up in the fight with Pride, and started back when Ed escaped with the chimeras, is that Ed no longer gets angry about being short. He's accepted it--in fact, he's turning it into a strength. He lets the chimeras pretend he's a kid to get away. When he breaks into Warehouse 3, he straight up plays a "helpless child," card to trick the guards. And he straight up says he wins the fight with Pride because, "I've always been a runt."

Ed repeatedly either refuses to let his weaknesses slow him, or turns them into strengths during these episodes. Crucially, he now understands his weaknesses. His selfishness has transformed into self-knowledge, and self-worth. He knows his own strengths and his weaknesses. This is a continuation of something that started way, way back in the Leor incident, when he used his metal arms to win a fight with the first chimera. He was always capable of this, he just didn't understand or know it. Now he does, and it makes all the difference

The previous time he turned himself into a philosopher's stone, it was a last, desperate resort. This time, he does it to completely blindside Pride. And rather than using that as a chance to destroy his enemy, he puts his very soul on the line to give his enemy a second chance. This is emphasized by his using his own coat with the Flamel symbol (the symbol of his own quest for a second chance) as a cushion for Pride.

Then he goes upstairs and fights Father tooth and nail. In the course of this fight, his arm is shattered. The last time his arm shattered during a fight (with Scar, way back at the beginning), Ed immediately gave up. He was consumed by helplessness, shame, and fear. This time, he goes back in to try to kick Father in the head.

Now we come to when Ed is pinned and Al saves him by sacrificing his own broken body. Ed's and Al's roles come full circle here, quite literally. Once, the only way Ed could find to save Al was by sacrificing his right arm. Now, the only way Al can find to save Ed is by giving it back. Where Al was once helpless, Ed is now helpless. But both rely on each other, and both walk away.

Ed now reflects Scar a few episodes back. One arm is a consequence of his brother's sacrifice, one is his own. Ed's connection to others is literally a part of his flesh, which enables his later realization. And Ed honors his brother's sacrifice by continuing to fight until Father is gone.

Now, we come to Ed's moment of truth. No, not when he meets Truth--he already knows 'the truth,' at that point. Ed is standing by what's left of his brother, and he feels as helpless as he did before when the transmutation first went wrong. He falls back into those old habits of thinking, too: "What alchemy can I do? I'm such a great alchemist! I have to keep thinking, I'll find a solution!"

Then his father comes up to him. He offers Ed his genuine, heartfelt sorrow. And he reminds Ed that Ed and Al aren't the only ones in this. Hohenheim loves them. He is in this with them, both their suffering and their responsibility. And Ed calls him father for the first time.

Ed looks around at all the other people who share his pain. He looks at his hands, one from his brother and one from himself. And his perspective on who he is and what he offers the world and the people he loves shifts, his perspective on what he can do, on the bounds of the possible, changes. His pride finally fades, and he relies on others completely.

It's not truly new. There's a reason he reaches all the way back to Nina when speaking to Truth. It's the fairy tale trope of, "the power was in you all along." Ed was never really in this alone, there was always Al, Winry, Pinako, and even his absent father. But his ability to see this, trust it, and use it to do the impossible and bring his brother home is the final point of his character development.

The whole thing is a massive trust fall. He trusts himself to get by without alchemy. His pride in his alchemic abilities is gone, replaced by genuine self-worth and self-trust. What really matter is others, not his alchemy, so he tells everyone to enjoy the show of his last transmutation. He is literally relying on his brother's door to get out of Truth's realm.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but there’s just something in the way Gege writes Gojo—his character, morals, childhood—that’s just downright depressing.

From the moment he’s introduced, the characters, the audience, all see him as this infallible god. He’s so obviously the Strongest that there was never any need to question his position or responsibilities. He’s amazing, cool, utterly hilariously, and gorgeous even by anime standards; it’s so obvious why he’s a fan favorite even by people who haven’t even read or watched JJK.

Sure, he’s flippant and egotistic to all hell, but given his baseline capabilities compared to literally everyone else? It makes complete sense why he’s like waves hand that.

But then Gege started revealing bits and pieces of his childhood and the implications of it—and I just got sad instead. Like, there’s no shortage of Chosen One stories, or Prophesied Children with destinies far too great, but I can’t remember the last time a character was introduced with having their birth change the fabric of reality. Gojo being born literally shifted the balance of the world—or rather, the world shifted to make space for him.

Which is just ridiculous to even imagine the sheer power, let alone the responsibilities he was forced to carry since birth.

He caused the shift, so of course, Gojo has to take responsibility for it, fairness be damned. He was born on a pedestal, and never once has it ever been considered if he shouldn’t be, because he’s Gojo, and there’s no way such power wouldn’t be weaponized.

Then there’s the whole implications about the child-Gojo Toji met vs absolute menace teen Gojo vs adult Gojo; the implications of a literal child having limitless; him having Six Eyes since possibly birth vs CT manifesting at age 5-8…There’s so much to think about, and none of it is good.

Then there’s the parallels of Toji meeting a child god-to-be, and Gojo inheriting Toji’s (literal) blessing, meeting another child god-to-be, and choosing differently.

Honestly, teen Gojo was just tragic af, cuz he was absolutely a menace to society, but he was also still so obviously a child.

And yeah, him discovering RCT was amazing, but what happened afterwards—discovering how to run infinity and RCT 24/7 just so he wouldn’t fail again, somewhat isolated from his own friends to run mission after mission because now he can, having people even want him to take their burdens and missions just because he could without thought or consideration to him and just what he can do for them—well, it’s not exactly surprising he developed a god complex.

He was born with the powers of a god, the world decided to turn him into a god, and then people wanted him to shoulder their burdens like a god. He’s not hateful like Geto, if anything he’s apathetic at best. His obsession with strength has more to do with sharing his burden rather than having to carry more of it than anything else.

Even Shibuya…the Prison realm activated in seconds (6 I think). Pretty sure if anyone saw the best friend they had to personally execute alive, they’d take more than a minute to gawk, much less a few seconds.

But he still got blamed anyway, for getting distracted, for getting tricked, for shifting the balance yet again with his disappearance. For being the slightest bit more human than the weapon the Jujutsu World wanted.

Gojo is a super tragic character and the fact that people see him only as cocky and arrogant just really shows that they are not paying attention.

Let's compare him with Homelander from The Boys. Similar upbringing and status; the difference is very much just personality. Jujutsu society has taken gojo for granted.

There are very clear parts of gojo's life where his personality has adjusted. Every time we have seen him as a child, he just looks sullen and pissed off, which is understandable as we can guess what it was like to be born "the strongest" and what that entails for one's upbringing.

Then in hidden inventory he's a bit more like the gojo we know, but still way more emotional and cranky. He has not yet grasped the fact that it will impossible for him to form real bonds with people without inevitable, terrible heartbreak. Then Toji happens, and geto's defection.

So in yugioh, especially the manga there's a dichotomy between yugi and kaiba that makes them both very interesting. Kaiba is a man with everything and yet he always wants more and has no one he can count on.

Yugi has nothing but his friends and smarts and kindness and that's enough for him to be happy. I would say yugioh is at it's best when.its a story about relationships around the card game rather than the cardgame itself.

Kaiba is one of those great examples. He's not interesting because hes a great duelist he's interesting because of his character's growth and background. A kid who had nothing, had to take what he got by his smarts, had to fight to stay on top.

Always alone. Having to accept he wasnt the best when he runs into yugi. Having to accept that there's more to life than being the best at all costs. Losing himself.

Losing the one person he cares about. Having to accept help from a stranger like he was that same weak orphan all over again.

Some meek kid showed mercy on him, on fricking Seto Kaiba. Having to over come his constant inferiority complex despite being basically a superstar billionaire. It eats at him. Even when his rival passes on it continues to eat at him.

He doesn't even have an actual complete story until after the movie. Kaiba is STILL an asshole. He still barely has friends. He's still obsessed with being at the top. But at least now he has Yugi as a friend, which is amazing for the man that had everything in the world but friends.

Personally I'd say kaiba, yugi, and bakura are the three most interesting characters and the only thing that holds this story from being truly great is that this was Takahashis first big hit and it played itself to safe with shonen tropes and put character development on the back burner in lieu of action and story.

So in yugioh, especially the manga there's a dichotomy between yugi and kaiba that makes them both very interesting. Kaiba is a man with everything and yet he always wants more and has no one he can count on.

Yugi has nothing but his friends and smarts and kindness and that's enough for him to be happy. I would say yugioh is at its best when. It’s a story about relationships around the card game rather than the cardgame itself.

Kaiba is one of those great examples. He's not interesting because hes a great duelist he's interesting because of his character's growth and background. A kid who had nothing, had to take what he got by his smarts, had to fight to stay on top.

Always alone. Having to accept he wasnt the best when he runs into yugi. Having to accept that there's more to life than being the best at all costs. Losing himself. Losing the one person he cares about. Having to accept help from a stranger like he was that same weak orphan all over again. Some meek kid showed mercy on him, on fricking Seto Kaiba. Having to over come his constant inferiority complex despite being basically a superstar billionaire.

It eats at him. Even when his rival passes on it continues to eat at him.

He doesn't even have an actual complete story until after the movie. Kaiba is STILL an asshole. He still barely has friends. He's still obsessed with being at the top. But at least now he has Yugi as a friend, which is amazing for the man that had everything in the world but friends.

This is certainly not to say that criticism against the character isn't valid; I can't defend the perv jokes nor do I intend to beyond my general belief that they are simply bad, outdated jokes and not meant to represent Sanji's actual character. You can also feel like the explanations given are bad writing on Oda's part, but I'm making this post because I feel like there are a lot of people that missed Oda providing some deeper insight into Sanji's character

So, the thing I like most about Sanji is how he's a character that won't compromise who he is. We can see all the time that Sanji chooses to make things harder for himself because of his beliefs. From choosing to save his family that didn't deserve it, not poisoning Big Mom's cake, refusal to hit women, and even his refusal to use his hands in a fight - Sanji's character is defined by the limitations he places on himself, and I think its neat that these limitations can both bite him in the ass and help him out when he meets people that have similar values to him. Whole Cake really shows this. Sanji's insistence to stick to his values constantly puts him in hot water, but its also how he gets Pudding to fall for him and a captain that will starve himself in yonko territory just to get him back. I just think that's neat and plays into One Piece's general theme of relying on others to do the things you can't

Sanji's refusal to compromise on who he is extends into Wano as well. We can see he is willing to sacrifice his pride to use his raid suit, something he doesn't like but also doesn't contradict his ideals and code, but he destroys the raid suit the second it starts to change him because he'd rather die than risk losing who he is as a person

Sanji's Code

I think the biggest disconnect with people that don't like Sanji (other than the perv jokes, which is, again, a perfectly valid reason not to like him) comes from the general idea that Sanji's code of refusing to hit women comes from a sexist ideology. And it does, but not from Sanji. It comes from Zeff:

Sanji originally doesn't understand why it's an issue

Which makes sense given that his sister was his strongest sibling. Sanji's code doesn't come from himself, it comes from his desire to please his father figure.

Doesn't that paint Zeff in a worse light? Well, yeah, but we're talking about a guy that was introduced to the story robbing an innocent ship of their food. He's more of a morally grey character than most in this idealistic series, and I don't think his sexism paints him much differently from how he was initially portrayed.

Regardless, we can see that Sanji's code doesn't come from his view of women, which is reinforced when he is willing to put Robin in danger to do something he couldn't do, and I think that's neat.

Sanji playing up his chivalry

Another thing I want to talk about is how I feel Sanji is often playing up his chivalrous, women-obsessed side in the series. I'm talking about times where he claims he's only concerned about the safety of his female crew members. I think this is mostly an act (because Oda thinks it's funny, but in-universe, I think its more of a pride thing). This is best shown in Whole Cake where Sanji shows concern for the safety of everyone before quickly correcting himself to say he's only concerned about Nami

I think Sanji, more often than not, wants to attribute his more caring side as chivalry rather than general concern, which leads to him saying he only cares about the safety of his female crew members despite his actions showing otherwise

I think one other thing that gets missed about Sanji is his obsession with women isn't just as a horny simp. In his flashback, we see he gets beaten and bullied by his brothers, he gets shunned and abandoned by his father.

But his mother showed him nothing but unconditional love until she died. She ate every meal he prepared for her, no matter how disgusting and revolting, just because it came from him. She was the first human being who he felt love from and who he felt genuinely cared about him.

The second was his sister. While she laughed at him when his brothers bullied and beat him (to keep up appearances), she never once joined in or directly contributed, and after their mother died and he was imprisoned, she would bring leftovers of food secretly to him. She then broke him out upon realisation that there was no way he could survive there under Judge if he was as emotional as he was. So the first two females in his life were the first people who showed him true kindness.

Geto was a Jujutsu sorcerer that valued himself on his moral pride. He was ethical, and followed the rulebook that went on and on about how "the weak must be protected". He stuck to that, not letting his emotions get in the way, and maintained his composure even at his highest rage that would soon begin his downfall.

And so it continues. After his conversation with Yuki, he feels validated in that there is meaning to wiping out every one of these 'monkeys' that can't even Jujutsu, going as far as to maybe even use that as an excuse of sorts-- later becoming a fullblown enemy of humanity. The bad guy.

But I don't think who that's he really was.

Geto is a man that couldn't find himself between his obligation as a Jujutsu sorcerer, and his natural rage as a human being.

He took one or the other to the extreme. As a sorcerer, he practically swore his life on the idea that the weak must be protected, even when the death of the 'weak' would've been justified, even if that would've let him settle his rage. Yet on the other hand, as a criminal, he follows the path of eliminating everyone that is unable to use Jujutsu, knowing full well that this ability is out of a normal person's control. But I think both were a lie, or, both were the truth. Either way, both were a deviation from his true self-- I'm going to be using a few quotes from JJK0 here.

"How selfish... But it's self-affirmation. After all, there's nothing more important in life." -JJK0, Chapter 4

Self-affirmation. There's nothing more important in life, huh? The more I look into that quote, the more I realize the kind of person that Geto truly was. Let's look at one more quote.

It's just that in this world, I couldn't truly be happy from the bottom of my heart. - JJK0, Chapter 4

Let me finally get to my point-- Geto was always about affirming himself, up until the moment of his death. I don't buy that Geto went from a man who swore to protect the weak to a man who swore to kill the weak, BUT. What other choice was there for him? He was realizing, for what seemed to be the first time ever, that the value of the weak isn't absolute. He said this much in Chapter 77-- but what was he supposed to do with that information?He had two sides clashing with each other, two extremes to pick from, so what did he do? He neglected one genuine part of himself because Yuki showed merit in the other extreme. "Saving the world" equated to ridding the world of cursed energy, and the easiest way of going about that was, to quote Yuki, "weed out non-Jujutsu sorcerers and make them adapt to a sorcerer-based society".

As the man who once swore to protect the weak, he didn't have any right to justify that cause. He doesn't, full-stop. So for the last time, he took it to the extreme, the only way he knew how, which was to set his eyes on "saving the world" in the guise of eradicating every non-Jujutsu sorcerer, and both moral outcomes cancelled out the other. This 'neutral' ending was really the only way out for the man who claimed that he couldn't be happy in this world. He knew it was never going to succeed, just like Gojo said. But there was a meaning in it, and that was enough to validate him in his descent into madness, and his inevitable death.

Living with that for years and thriving in that self-affirmation, knowing full well that it was never going to go anywhere. He'd do anything for this self-affirmation, as, y'know, he did kill people, and became a religious leader figure-- another form of extremism in his case.

Geto was trapped from the very start. He was never going to be happy just by being under school. His true self was when he was a cursed user who truly lived his life. I like to compare it to a person working a job that they aren't happy with. It's like bearable to the point where you just can't stand it and just want to ditch it for something you truly want to do.

There was no way he could wipe out the humans and he knew that to a degree because population and Gojo is there as well. His own ideal world was so far away from him yet he saw his best friend obtain that power that he needed to accomplish his goal. He tells Gojo I bet you can do it Gojo. The impossible is possible to you, but impossible for me.

Like most of the main characters, Joey suffers from a lot of mischaracterization and misunderstanding, which could be seen as odd as he's a basically straightforward person.

But straightfowardness and simplicity are not the same as being a flat character-- Joey is equally as complex as Yugi or Kaiba (albiet much less fractured than Kaiba).

Joey's most common plague is the label of "the dumb one." He's also shown as the "girly one" in a lot of puppyshipping fics, which quite frankly is beyond me, since Joey is also one of the most, if not THE most, masculine characters in the series.

(Invid comments, "He is less masculine than Rafael, and... um... and Panik. Maybe Mako.")

What people who label Joey the "dumb one" tend to miss is that he's actually the leader of the group. Yugi is the main character and the Chosen One, certainly, but he's perfectly happy to stand in back and let Joey take point. In group shots, there are always twocharacters leading the stroll-- Joey with Yugi slightly behind him.

Joey almost always enters a room first. Joey usually speaks first. It usually means something is up when anything different happens.

This is because Joey's base character is that of the typical shonen hero: hot-headed, good-hearted, too quick to speak and act.

The man always says the first thing that comes into his head (and speaking from experience, that usually ends with you saying many very strange or stupid things.)

Compare both Yugi and Joey to the first other shonen heroes that spring into your mind-- Ash Ketchum. Naruto. Goku. Luffy. Who resembles them more? (Hint: It's not the short one.)

This does not mean Joey is stupid. He's merely much, much less reserved. When he does take the necessary time to think things through (and this is difficult for him mainly because he has too much energy and can't calm down enough most of the time) he's easily as strategic as Kaiba. If there's anything "wrong" with Joey per se, it's that he has ADD.

Joey is, in his own way, a crazy sort of ingenius. Because Yugi stands beside him, we tend to overlook his incredible accomplishments. Even with Yugi there, no one else would have had quite the fire and ability to come in second at Duelist Kingdom despite having had no name for himself before (and Joey did give Yugi a run for his money, so to speak.)

Yugi doesn't assist him once during Battle City, but once again Joey excells despite occassionally thinking too fast.

Pegasus displays genuine admiration for him during the duel with Bandit Keith (and in the dub, tellingly, Joey is never called "Joey-boy" by Pegasus. He gets "Joseph," which for Pegasus is much more respectful.) In the Oreichalchos saga, he finds himself with

the most difficult of the three dragons to use (Hermos, who needs not one but two monsters on the field AND you have to figure out what the heck your new toy DOES) and yet uses it skillfully after only one "trial" duel (the one with Mai, interrupted by Valon.)

Joey's growth as a duelist is also another sign of the fact that he's a more traditional shonen hero than Yugi is-- Yugi already had his skills, just not the confidence. Joey had more confidence than he had skills in the beginning, but his mastery of those skills is quick and incredible.

Beyond all that, Joey has a very strange collection of skills. Most of these are best on display during the early manga and the anime's Duelist Kingdom, in which Joey avails himself as 1. A carpenter 2. A locksmith (or a lockpick, but they're essentially the same thing) 3. A pickpocket 4. and a cook.

For whatever reason, Téa refuses to eat Joey's cooking during the Oriechalchos saga, but I suspect that either the writers or Téa forgot that, during Duelist Kingdom, he was the only one who bothered making their dinner outside the castle worth eating. (Probably the writers, as Téa is infallible. XD [/joke]) Joey's purpose within the gang, as a team, is to take point and to take care of random needs presented to the group.

Because of this he's sort of a Swiss Army knife when it comes to his abillities: they're small, but numerous and practical. (He's a good fighter, but an unskilled one. This is why Kaiba always wins.)

Probably Joey's skills come from his background: he's the son of a divorced alchoholic who essentially grew up on the streets and had to fend for himself. He spent a lot of time in gangs before coming to high school and terrorized a lot of other kids. Before becoming friends with Yugi, his main prospects for the future included armed robbery and carjacking. One wonders how he ended up at Domino High instead of Rintama High-- potential reasons include a falling-out with Hirutani or the realization that this path was no way to keep his promise to his sister (in Japan, remember, students have some choice in what high schools they go to.)

My personal favorite theory is that Tristan had something to do with it. Most likely, it was a combination of all three. Joey is one of the only characters whose direct relationship with his father is vital to his character.

Though his father's neglect almost ruined Joey's life, Joey actively continues to support him financially throughout the series. (This is probably the real reason he continues to hold a job after getting the Duelist Kingdom money, at least so far as the dub is concerned. If papa knew Joey had money, he might drink it all up.)

Not that I'm sure Joey suffers from active physical abuse from his father. He probably has been hit with the occasional beer bottle, and most certainly has obtained a few bruises over the years, but it occurs to me that Joey might not even realize he's being abused, seeing that he himself is very rough when physically affectionate. If anything, "That's just how Dad is when he's drunk." He does love his father, which the early manga makes clear, and at least at that point, is convinced that just obtaining financial security will "fix" their relationship (he probably already feels otherwise by the end of the series, though. Kaiba is living proof that money does not equal happiness. XD) Being a top duelist makes money less of a worry later on, I imagine, but as part of his early character money is a constant struggle and source of envy for him.

One of his greater accomplishments as a man is proving himself capable of earning, winning and providing for his loved ones, something his father failed to do. The actual most likely source of the family's falling apart, and even the most likely source of his father's alchohilsm, were struggles with Serenity's medical issues.

Joey solved the problem. Part of the reason for his success was learning to accept the help of others. Joey's father probably never learned that, and I can imagine him having once been a very proud man.

Another oft-overlooked aspect of Joey is that he is an awesome judge of character, once he's past that first impression. Out of the characters in the series, the ones who understand Kaiba best by the end of it are Mokuba, Yugi and Joey.

When Mai needs things said to her, it rarely takes him long to ferret out the best thing to say (even though, as noted before, all the wrong things to say come out first, because he always says the first thing that pops into his head.)

He also has slightly better social skills than either Yugi or Kaiba, at least in that he's unafraid to approach people he finds interesting and presents a more approachable manner himself. He's definitely better-adjusted than Kaiba is, although their respective characters share a lot in common.

(This isn't surprising given their respective archetypes, which are two sides of the same coin.)

Something that most people DO understand about Joey's character is that he's almost everybody's best buddy, although I don't think most of them quite realize how far the series pushes this. Yes, he's Yugi's best friend, but he's also Tristan's best friend, and he's Bakura's pretty darn good friend, and Téa's best (platonic) friend, and his sister's best friend, and he sure does get along with Duke quite well. Mako likes him, Mokuba likes him, Pegasus respects him, Valon likes him (eventually), Mai falls in love with him.

Marik likes him, and he's seen exchanging rough affection with Odion at one point in the manga. And, of course-- Kaiba likes him, too. As I noted in Kaiba's character study, Kaiba picks on Joey because Joey is funny. More importantly, by the end of Battle City, Kaiba even respects Joey, although obviously that doesn't stop him from teasing Joey.

Kaiba doesn't have very many friends at all, much less ones he can tease. Joey fulfills an important role for him, and in turn, Kaiba gets Joey mad enough to stand up and excell. If

Yugi, Tristan and Téa provide Joey with the support, and Serenity provides the motivation, Kaiba stokes the fire and acts as the grinding stone to sharpen Joey's determination. (wow what a mixed metaphor.) By the end of the series, Joey is one of Kaiba's closest friends, even if Kaiba isn't one of Joey's. (Although I do believe Joey considers Kaiba to be a friend. Just not the kind you borrow money from. XD)

Earlier in the study I commented that Joey is one of the most masculine characters in the series. People familiar with the cross-dressing fiasco from Series 0 may feel otherwise, but one thing to remember about that is that Joey IS Japanese.

Before becoming infused with Western culture, the Japanese wore what was essentially unisex clothing, the main differences being in how people tied their kimonos.

I tend to think this makes the average Japanese person more comfortable in his or her masculinity or femininity, and Joey is one of the most comfortable people in the whole series-- if he does things like that, it's because he's comfortable enough in his masculinity that it's not a big deal to him. Out of the male characters, Joey's body language is among the most masculine, when he's not effecting someone else's.

(He's also got that horribly terrifying "macho" face he and Tristan both do, but I'm not going to go too far into that.)

For Joey, much of the series involves his proving himself as a man. The first time I watched the scene where he and Mai part after Battle City, I felt like he had "arrived." The "final duel of Battle City" scene only solidified that. (Invid disagrees: he feels Joey "arrived" during his duel with Yami Marik. I'm cool with that, but his parting with Mai made it feel more sealed and permanent to me.)

Analysis of Maximillion Pegasus's card choices, character, and dialogue.

Toon World represents Pegasus's motive in one card. What is his motive? He wants to create a realistic hologram of Cyndia using KaibaCorp's technology so he can see her lifelike image again.

Now what does Toon World do? It turns monsters into Toons, rendering them nearly immortal. In other words, it creates digital images of their former selves, holographic images that will never die. The card that protects his beloved toons is the same card that represents his motive.

It's notable that the Penalty Games also mirror his motive, in that Yugi's grandpa is sealed in a videotape, while the Kaiba brothers are sealed in cards.

But Toon World isn't the only card with hidden depth. One of the most misunderstood cards in the entire story is Thousand Eyes Idol. In the OCG, it's a level 1 vanilla monster with 0 ATK and DEF. Why does this card exist? Is it only because it's a fusion material monster for Thousand Eyes Restrict? Consider the following:

In the manga, it's a level 6 monster, not a level 1 monster.

In the manga, Fusion monsters did not exist as physical cards. They took their abilities from their fusion materials.

Thousand Eyes Restrict had two effects: an absorption ability (from Relinquished), and a paralysis ability that activated when its thousand eyes were opened.

From these facts, we can conclude that Thousand Eyes Idol has an effect that paralyzes all other monsters. It's not written on the card, but most effects, types, and attributes aren't written on the cards. And it makes sense; it follows the trend of Pegasus's monsters having weak stats (0 ATK!), but powerful effects, such as Dark Eyes Illusionist, Jigen Bakudan, and of course, Relinquished.

It's very neat that Pegasus, the president of I2, or Industrial Illusions, uses a series of Illusion monsters, and his goal to essentially create a lifelike illusion of Cyndia.

Speaking of which, that trend of Illusion monsters actually starts with Illusionist Faceless Mage, not just in name, but in visual effect as well. When Faceless Mage controls Dark Magician using the “Eye of Deception” combo, the visual effect is identical to the one used by Relinquished when absorbing Dark Magician. In addition, the first duel between Atem and Pegasus had Dark Magician versus Faceless Mage, while their second duel had Dark Magician of Chaos versus Thousand Eyes Restrict.

Note that Dark Magician of Chaos does not defeat Restrict on its own, but rather through the sacrifice of Kuriboh (first blocking the absorption light, then blowing up the paralyzing eyes). This can represent a number of different things: Yugi and Atem working together to block the Millennium Eye; Yugi sacrificing himself in the Shadow Game; or Yugi and his friends blocking the Millennium Eye.

Now, let's shift to a broader viewpoint. Looking at Pegasus's deck as a whole, we see that he is a defensive/control type player. Many of his cards are reactive and are used to nullify or redirect his opponent's effects. Mermaid's Tear, Dragon Capture Jar, Prophecy, Trap Displacement, and Magic Neutralizing Force are just a few examples. (It doesn't hurt that these cards are extremely easy to play with knowledge of the opponent's cards.) You could also say that Toon World is the perfect defense, while Relinquished is the perfect control.

This in itself reveals plenty about Pegasus's character and personality. It goes without saying that Pegasus is manipulative and knows how to get others to do what they want. Aside from Mokuba as a hostage, Pegasus said this to get Kaiba to duel Yugi:

“You and he are like the separate ends of this tie. If you tie it together, they pull tightly against each other, sharing the same fate... bound together... each one straining against the other. The time has come... for two duelists to intersect.”

But he's very cautious as well. He duels through the videotape not only to force Yugi to enter the tournament, but also to gauge his skill level. He has no qualms with using his own one-of-a-kind cards, and even initiates a Shadow Game to ensure his victory when his Millennium Eye is countered. He stays mainly in his castle, behind the gate that requires ten star chips to pass through. Not even Croquet could enter, which prompted Kaiba to take him hostage to force Pegasus to come to him. But instead, Pegasus speaks to him via intercom screen.

This cautiousness extends to his dueling philosophy as well. In his duel with Yugi, he says the following:

“The road to defeat is lined with a great number of mistakes, one after the other... Let me say one thing. I never make mistakes.”

“Skilled duelists do not need instincts. They use their brains to win without taking risks...”

In other words, Pegasus believes victory comes from perfect play. Of course, that's a lot easier said than done.

Contrast this with what Yugi says to him:

“The good judgment needed to know the rules and assess the situation... and the instincts to decide when and how to act. Whoever has those two things, wins. Judgment comes from experience and confidence... instincts requires even more confidence.”

In other words, victory comes from experience. One of my friends once said, “Don't play to win, play to improve.” This fits right into the theme of independence and growth. The important thing isn't the number of successes or the number of failures; it's learning from your mistakes and not giving up, because losing is not the end. (This same theme is explored in the duel between Yugi and Mai.)

To put it bluntly: Pegasus is a terrible duelist. He's never had an advantage without his Millennium Eye. Think about this: Yugi uses Mirror Force three times in the manga:

Weevil/Haga fell prey to it.

The Ventriloquist (Fake Kaiba in the anime) countered it with Negate Attack.

Pegasus fell prey to it.

In other words, the Player Killer that Pegasus hired, displayed more skill than Pegasus.

Speaking of Player Killers, the way Pegasus treats other people is very interesting. On one hand, there's no doubt that he's ruthless and callous. There is no real need to take Yugi's soul. He only needs to beat Yugi, and to have KaibaCorp's technology. Yugi's soul is irrelevant. The tournament was the worst tournament you could ever think of:

Even before the tournament started, the boat to get there didn't have any rooms except for the finalists from the previous tournament.

The tournament lasted 48 hours, but participants were not given food or shelter.

A guy had his star chips stolen and hence was disqualified.

Disqualified players were forced to row back on their own.

Player killers were hired by Pegasus to get rid of half the total star chips.

Pegasus noticed Keith cheating, but didn't disqualify him. He only gave him a Penalty Game because Keith got in his way.

On the other hand, he appears to be kind to others, giving out a deck to a kid before his duel with Bandit Keith (the same kid whom he later calls for to humiliate Keith). In Yu-gi-oh R!, we learn he adopted a number of orphans, some of them raised to be heirs to I2. His ruthlessness may be due to the influence of the Millennium Eye. When he is in Egypt, before he meets Shadi, he sees a thief being captured and he offers money to the captors out of pity for him.

Which is ironic, because Pegasus is the one who might be pitied. He's a tragic character. Unlike almost everyone else in Yu-gi-oh, Pegasus's motive isn't revenge. It's love. Almost an obsessive love. No, I am not justifying his actions. Pegasus does not even seem remorseful at the end. And according to Takahashi, his mind is just as twisted as Dark Marik's. But it's tragic nonetheless.

And that tragedy really changes how you read the manga on subsequent readings. When he's reading comics and drinking wine, he says:

“The finest wine... well-aged gorgonzola cheese... and the world's best comic, made in America... Funny Rabbit! Truly I am blessed among men!”

When he holds the cards that contain the souls of the Kaiba brothers, he says:

“You poor, lost siblings... though your cards are so close... the distance between you may as well be infinite... If only you could have gone to heaven... you could have enjoyed a reunion...”

I've always seen Pegasus's story as a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice - I don't think it's any coincidence that his name itself is a reference to Greek mythology in a series that is more tied to Egypt.

Personal feelings (real personal)