#Amon Garam

[pico-farad]

Happy 20th anniversary to GX, a show that has followed me from my childhood to now as an adult.

Historically in Japan, 20 is the age in which you pass into adulthood. So I guess GX itself has finally come of age.

[raintides]

gx!!

[seventhdoctor]

A Trapezoid of Foils: Judai/Yubel and Amon/Echo

I'm back on my bullshit, and my bullshit is yelling about the trashfire that is Judai Yuki and Yubel. This post is a collection of thoughts on how Amon and Echo were clearly meant to reflect Judai and Yubel in some way or other, and how it feels like it should be neater than it is. The parallels are there, but it's not fully symmetrical and some of the angles are kind of weird...so yeah, kind of like a (non-isosceles) trapezoid!

(Geometry Tumblr do not @ me, I'm doing my best with this metaphor)

Spoilers for GX season 3, naturally. I haven't said it before, but for this post as well as previous ones I'm basing all information and characterization on the sub version of GX rather than the dub (which drastically changes Yubel's backstory and motives).

Yubel and Amon

This is the most obvious one, because Yubel spends two whole episodes and honestly some of their most iconic monologues trying to tear Amon down after building him up the whole season.

They're both antagonists willing to cause harm to the one they love for their goals. For Amon, that goal is the power to build a utopia. For Yubel, the harm is the goal - or at least, the metric by which they will have achieved their goal (showing their love for Judai).

Yubel, of course, claims that Amon is more selfish in his use of harm. Pain is love in their philosophy, but it's mutual pain - dishing out the pain without taking any back would only be mere cruelty. This of course misses the nuance that Echo wanted Amon to use her as a sacrifice, while Judai didn't welcome any of Yubel's twisted affections.

Still, from what I've seen most people agree that Yubel comes across as more "honest" one way or another. And to understand why things feel that way, it's important to look at their backstory and motivations, as well as how their motivations change.

Yubel dedicated themself to Judai's past life, tying themself to him through lifetimes, and in the present remained true to that devotion in unwanted ways. When Judai sent them to space and it ended up being Oops! All Torture, Yubel developed their sadomasochistic philosophy as a coping mechanism and an attempt to reconcile Judai's past promises and present actions.

Upon their return to Earth, they planned to return the "favor": by sending Yubel to the pain and isolation of outer space Judai made them stronger (i.e., infected by the Light of Destruction, with all that entails), so they'll give him his own painful experience (all of season 3) to make him stronger (awaken his power as Supreme King). Then they'll reunite, having both demonstrated their love for each other, and [this part is where the Light of Destruction really twists up their thinking]. Everything they do is in the name of this motive*, whether Judai really likes it or not.

Amon dedicated himself to the Garam conglomerate with Echo by his side before being replaced by his younger brother Sid, the sole blood Garam sibling. He nearly murdered Sid before changing his mind and dedicating himself wholly to his brother instead, a decision Echo and Yubel both describe as willingly chaining himself to their service. Even when given an opportunity to become the heir (all it'd take is watching his brother die to illness, not even murder) he rejects it, and begs for a way to save him.

And yet, when when given the opportunity he made a deal with the devil to break the chains he put on himself and abandon that same family. Then when he gets the chance to obtain power by sacrificing someone he loves, he does exactly that. Then he plans to become king of a utopia free of suffering, and always remember Echo.

So then, what are Amon's motives? Is he somebody who got tired of being abandoned or unappreciated? An ends-justify-the-means idealist? Just a power-hungry hypocrite? It's hard to tease out a consistent character and ideology from him. And in a show where people wear their hearts in their decks, I think this part of why people hate him - and so does Yubel.

Yubel hates Johan because he's terrifyingly like Yubel in some ways, focused and protective and dear to Judai.** Yubel hates Amon because he can't be like Yubel at all, resenting the brother he dedicated himself to and sacrificing the person he loved for power in an empty world forever devoid of that same person.

No way Yubel can be that kind of person, right? Otherwise, what was it all for?

* To be fair, you don't know all of Yubel's backstory by the time of their final duel with Amon. However, even removing the context of their past life that duel together with Yubel!Johan vs. Hell Kaiser establishes Yubel's central motivations more coherently than they do Amon's.

** Help, I know there's been other essay segments on this topic, text and video alike. But I saw a lot of them back in early 2023 when I was mindlessly going through GX material in a haze of hyperfixation and now I've forgotten all the other good sources.

Yubel and Echo

If Yubel's parallels with Amon are about their dedication, Yubel's parallels with Echo are about who they're dedicated to. Both believe in their loved one's destiny to become a king, and take actions to make them that king.

Yubel has historical basis in that Judai is quite literally the Supreme King, bearer of the gentle darkness. To help him achieve that role, Yubel enacts a plot to break Judai until he awakens his Supreme King side. It fits neatly into their schema of things: this is how they make the person they love stronger, so that they will thrive and survive. Make Judai stronger and awaken his old power, and all will be as it was meant to be.

Echo just believes that Amon is amazing enough that he would make a better king than anyone. When the chances arises to help break his chains and give him a world to rule, Echo takes it.

...And boy does she.

Both Yubel and Echo believe their loved ones are meant to be a king. Both give their lives in support of their loved one, and become weapons wielded in their service.

No wonder Yubel was shaken by Echo's devotion remaining within Exodia for just a moment - it's not all that far from their own.

Unfortunately Yubel's only direct interaction with Echo is goading her attack on field-Yubel during the final Amon duel. Otherwise they only speak of Echo as someone used and abandoned by Amon - which in itself has potential, given Yubel's own feelings about Judai sending them away.

I think GX could definitely have explored this connection a bit more. There's space to fill here.

Judai and Amon

As noted above, Judai and Amon both have roles as kings - at least, in the eyes of their single most loyal people. Judai holds the title of Supreme King as the wielder of gentle darkness, and while not confirmed his past life sure looked like a prince. Amon simply has ambition, talent, and an ideal world in his mind.

And in operating with the ambition of kings, they both do terrible things to achieve power. Judai lays this out explicitly in the Edo vs. Amon duel:

Amon lets his need for power get in the way of his other relationships and priorities, and sacrifices the ones he loves to obtain Exodia similarly to how Judai sacrificed his friends and eventually uncountable innocents for his own goals - finding Johan, and then ruling as Supreme King. Straightforward, right?

But I think there's another parallel between the two that's a lot more interesting. Or...most of a parallel. Namely, their relationship with their other halves and the responsibility of a loyal follower who would give up anything for you, be it their life or their humanity.

What do you do when the person you love most dedicates their existence to you - to the point of throwing everything else away, even their very life?

Of course, the Judai-Yubel and Amon-Echo situations aren't exactly the same even putting aside the issue of reincarnation. (For the purposes of this essay I'm not making huge distinctions between Judai and his past life, but if you want to get into the details I've written about that previously.)

Yubel went ahead and made their sacrifice without Judai's input, and all he could do was decide how to respond. He chose to dedicate himself back to them so hard it crossed lifetimes, so hard he chose to risk his own existence for them as well in his next life.

Amon, on the other hand, is the one who proposed Echo sacrifice herself for him. Echo agreed to it, and even by the end she stood by her decision. But Amon loaded the gun and pulled the trigger.

He tries to honor her sacrifice, of course. He's always mindful of Echo's sacrifice and what it means. But in the end, he did choose to sacrifice her, ultimately using her as a pawn. Their love never trumped his own objectives.

And I think the example of Amon and Echo leads to the question: if Judai had the choice of letting Yubel become a dragon or stopping them, what would he do? When it was explicitly their will?

This is another missed opportunity, one that could have solidified the parallels neatly. But GX never asks that question, so the answer is unclear. What could have been a parallel is just kind of...askew.

Judai and Echo

Okay, I admit there isn't a lot here off the top of my head. Probably the best parallels between them are in relation to their other halves, as the people "harmed" by their villainous partners, and how they respond to that harm.

Judai rejects Yubel's torments as unwanted attention, until he remembers the past and flips to understanding why Yubel did they did and makes moves to unite the two of them forever. Echo, meanwhile, understands Amon's motives from start to end and...lets herself be sacrificed, the end.

I don't know about this one. Really, ultimately Echo is supposed to be a willing participant in her own sacrifice but in the end I still don't feel like the narrative gave her a strong sense of agency in the matter and it really weakens my attempt to write this section.

In Conclusion

Some of these connections are stronger than others for sure, but I argue that they're all there in some way or another. They're very uneven and overall I'm not entirely sure what you're meant to take from the parallels, and I wish I could give something neat and concise for this section. Instead, it's a bit messy and misshapen - hence, the trapezoid metaphor.

Still, I think there's interesting room for thought in this awkward space. I was certainly thinking about these parallels while working on the latest chapter of Need (accidental last-minute plug?) and trying to figure out exactly what the prince felt while Yubel was in the middle of dragon surgery. What must it be like, to be in these relationships of sacrificial devotion?

[blastthechaos]

The fact that Yubel mocks whenever their opponents summon monsters with zero attack points will never not be funny.

This is peak clownery.

(I know the Amon example isn't 0 attack points but 1 but the point still stands)

[yugirl]

GX tober Day 17: Adrian Gecko

Welp here he is! Adrian Gecko with the Peacock Miraculous- because no character could pull the Felix scheme like Adrian- (and sans redemption arc)

I’m going to be honest I’m not happy with this one. I tried I really tried but I discovered the peacock miraculous is one of the most difficult to design outfits for. But that’s ok! Inktober isn’t about perfection, it’s about trying new things using a simple method of inks. This inktober was about me trying and not trying to perfect every image

Leave it to my least favourite character to take me down a peg or two and remind me of my original plans for this series. At least tomorrow is a special fave of mine!

[redbullgivesyouwingedkuriboh]

YGX characters as dumb things my friends have said:

Judai Yuki: I want to consume the health advisory lollipop.

Sho Marafuji: *whistles* Maybe I’m not a failure!

Asuka Tenjoin: I don’t steer *launches down a hill on a sled*

Jun Manjoume: Aesthetically, your dick!

Johan Andersen: *yelling at the floor* WHAT ARE YOUR PRONOUNS!?!

Jim Crocodile Cook: I see myself as a bear. And the animal.

Austin O’Brien: I’m Sam Eagle and nothing violent happened on January 6th!

Cronos: *side-eyeing Judai* a village is not a village until it has an idiot.

Amon Garam: I’m being bullied for being upper middle class!

Fubuki Tenjoin: Go chase your bus of white girls!

Ryo Marafuji: The secret code is crowbar. *kicks down a door*

Samejima: *after watching Judai duel* …some of that was right.

Daitokuji: I am not telling you taking shrooms is a good idea, I’m reading William James.

BONUS:

Cronos: Timothee Chalamet is very pretty.

Samejima: indeed.

Cronos:

Samejima: little too young for me, though.

[kaiowut99]

GX Finalized-Subs!106 (WIP): Drizzling Details

[trying to make a cloud pun work for a bio-related post is suffering]

Getting more work underway on finalized!106 and 107, and I wanted to take a more proper crack at translating the bio on Amon that O'Brien hands Professor Cobra as they talk early in 106. This bio actually shows up a handful of times in the first half of Season 3; the shot I used here to compile a "full" version of it is taken from 106 (hence Cobra's thumb), Manjoume pulls up the first half as he's looking him up in 111, and Amon brings it up for deletion in the first different world when they all stumble into his submarine in 121 (used for the second shot, isolated from the equivalent shot below, which I used to base the full version on), though it's super shrunken there. I actually previously translated it in my last run through Season 3, but only in its uses for 111 and 121, and I figured I'd give it a better once-over now since, looking back, I'm not too happy with some capitalization/font choices here, and I made a mistake with one of Amon's cards:

I've also transcribed the Japanese text on this, since I was actually surprised no Japanese fans managed to (text under the cut below), but from that, I updated my translation on Amon's bio and retranslated his cards in the list there, doing my best to measure things out to make sure things are evenly spaced out. The picture of Amon isn't a consideration, since I'll be masking the original picture over this edit as I work it into the video. Also decided to match Crunchyroll and use "Garam Conglomerate" vs the older "Garam Finance," especially since, with the way Manjoume talks about them in 111, they're much bigger than his family's financial group.

One thing worth noting: this lists Rain Storm as one of his Magic Cards and Diamond-Dust Cyclone as one of his Traps--but by the time he used them in 111/112, they were a Trap and Magic respectively. It's possible they were originally meant to be a Magic and Trap, but I accounted for this by properly listing DDC in Rain Storm's place (where for some reason I thought to use Wonder Cloud in my previous translation lol) and Rain Storm in DDC's place.

With this done, I'll also be doing a version to use in 111 with hyperlinks colored in, just to get it out of the way; then, I'll work it into 106 proper, into the two shots as Cobra looks at it and as he hands it back to O'Brien. But hoping it looks nicely done!

[also new Cloudian support when, some of his cards are still unreleased lol]

アモン＝ガラム イースト校チャンピオン

デュエルアカデミアイースト校2005年度総合チャンプ。 どんな相手にも即座に対応できる柔軟な思考力と、変幻自在のデッキを持つ。 ガラム財閥当主・ゴア＝ガラム氏の長子。

主力カード： オールラウンド・クラウド・デッキ

・モンスター 「雲魔物－羊雲」 「雲魔物－ニンバスマン」 「雲魔物－ゴースト・フォッグ」 「雲魔物－ポイズン・クラウド」 「雲魔物－アイ・オブ・ザ・タイフーン」

・魔法 「宝札雲」 「召喚雲」 「暴風雨」* 「大召喚雲」

・罠 「ナチュラル・ディザスター」 「蜃気楼の標的」 「ダイヤモンドダスト・サイクロン」**

*This is Rain Storm listed under his Spells, but Rain Storm turns out to be a Trap.

**This is Diamond-Dust Cyclone listed under his Traps, but it's a Spell.

[pdutogepi]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX - Duel Box 13 DVD Art - Amon Garam (Adrian Gecko) - Hell Kaiser Ryo (Dark Zane) - Yubel

[kcuf-ad]

In my GX: Rewrite, Adrian Gecko will be a good guy because I really like the character and think he is a hilarious character.

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

I don't know if I've talked about this on Tumblr (or if I just keep bringing it up in videos I never post) but I think Amon is seriously underrated.

I really REALLY like him in a "like to hate him" way. He has this backstory that's inherently sympathetic and it explains why he's the way he is but it's not once used as justification for his terrible actions, which is amazing and refreshing. He is awful and unbelievably selfish and it makes for such a fun character that I was so satisfied to see defeated the way he was. The horrific things he did to Echo, the way even the main villain Yubel calls him out for his terrible actions, the way those two contrasted each other, everything about Amon vs Yubel really, was so engaging to watch.

Amon's awfulness makes GX a better show. He's a completely unlikeable character that I actually enjoy watching, which is rare for me personally.

[urfavegetssenttothehellishyard]

Can you throw amon garam from yugioh gx in there?

AMON GARAM HAS BEEN SENT TO THE HELLISH YARD

[elemental-daddy-neos]

Reasons why I believe Chazz is a “Yells ‘I won’t hesitate bitch’ before shooting someone” type of guy

He really said “I hope you can swim bitch!”

Also props to the helicopter dudes who are totally okay with being paid to carry these two teenagers over the ocean so they can have a dramatic duel to decide which rich bitch is better

[namitomoon]

Amon Garam is underrated tbh

(Warning: Spoilers for Yugioh GX)

When talking about GX characters I feel like a lot of people overlook Amon Garam/Adrian Gecko. He is probably one of my favorite characters.

Look, I get it, he's a piece of crap and deserved to be wiped out by Yubel/Johan. But I like what he represents in the story and how different he is from the rest of the main cast.

He's introduced as a jovial and sort of eccentric ace duelist in S3. Like a personal rival to Manjoume/Chazz, same background (rich boy) but somewhat...better (less impulsive, more clever, overall better duelist) which is exposed on their sky duel.

And then he starts to change and become colder, more ruthless, smug and manipulative as S3 goes on, especially after partnering with Yubel. He sacrifices the woman he loves in order to attain Exodia's power without any second thoughts and he really seems to embrace his new role as King.

The scene where he's riding Exodia and refuses to finish the recently de-SKized Judai/Jaden is quite telling. He's drunk on power. He gambled and got a hell of a pay. And unlike Judai, who became SK after a hell of a traumatic event or Saio/Sartotius who was possesed by the Light of Destruction, Amon did it all consciously and out of his own will. No demonic possession, no LoD, no ancient millenary item possesion, nothing. Just an extremely ambitious bastard. In a way, he reminds me of Seto Kaiba in the early Yugioh manga chapters, before he got Mind Crushed by Yami.

Eventually, Yubel possessing Johan snaps him back to reality by kicking his ass and wiping him out. Right before dying he 1) reveals that actually he wanted to become King to the typical "making the world a better place" shtick and 2) shows regret for killing Echo.

While number 1 seems to come out of nowhere and feels like a lame attempt to somewhat redeem him, I think it makes him even more tragic. I think of Amon and he reminds me of complex antihero "ends justify the means" characters like Canute from Vinland Saga and Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass.

(YES I just compared Yugioh with Vinland and Geass)

I feel like, if Yugioh broadened its scope to maybe a more mature setting, characters like Amon could probably be rewritten in a more neutral or even sympathetic light. And yet, because GX is deeply inside a shonen anime focused on promoting a card game, such risks couldn't be taken.

And don't get me wrong, I think Amon was very well handed. He feels like an inverse of Axel O'Brien. While Axel starts as a stoic, cold and aloof duelist loyal to the shady Professor Cobra, Amon gets introduced as a charming and skilled guy who seems to oppose Cobra's schemes (after all, that means he's a good guy, right?) And yet, Axel ends up warming up to the main cast and even being (along with Jim) the one who saves Judai, while Amon ends up going the dark route. The fact they both come from Academies located on opposite cardinal points (Amon from east, Axel from west) might not be a mere coincidence.

To top it off, I just love how Amon and Axel end up in such different spots at the series finale.

Axel? With the main cast, being one more of them, eating, drinking, cracking a few jokes, enjoying their company. He's part of the gang despite arriving later. Like Johan (and my boy Jim)

Amon? Who the hell knows. And who the hell cares. Dead. Forgotten. Vanished into nothing. Sentenced to life in the Shadow Realm. And the best part is that, aside from his aparition on the "missing student cards" on S3 ending, nobody brings him up at all. They dislike him so much that for what they know he may be being devored by harpies or tortured in some dungeon in the Dark World, it's all the same for the gang. They have better things to think about than some power drunk greedy ambitious asshole who killed the woman he loved for nothing.

Axel won friends, which is why he was given a second chance in S4. Amon lost it all, which is why he's one of the few GX characaters that died permanently. Maybe it was Shin Yoshida's intention to send a message in favor of personal bonds and connections. Maybe he forgot about Amon.

But no matter what, Amon is probably one of the GX characters that caught my attention the most.

[sennen-pencil]

:DDDDDD

[aberooski]

I have not known peace since Adrian murdered Echo.

[chazz-is-a-zelda-fan]

how the fuck is Aster Phoenix drinking more respect women juice than Adrian. nevermind i know why its because Adrian Gecko is a BITCH