#If you’re interested in learning more about the og atlantis dialogues I’d highly recommend OSP’s Legends Summarized: Atlantis

[shitpostingkats]

Crack Theory: Jaden Yuki is (at least partially) Atlantian

As usual, this is 100% my own connection making brain going crazy, I doubt this is what the writers intended, if they thought about it at all. Also, this essay is not free of infodumping or absurdity. 

So, Atlantis has always been... kinda weird, in yugioh. Other than just the absolute wildness of it just. Canonically existing. The Waking the Dragons arc has some of the most far reaching lore implications for the franchise as a whole, introducing ideas like the spirit world, duel monsters appearing in history (outside of egypt lol), and some major afterlife magic. Things that yugioh will expand on in following series, and things that were, I reiterate, introduced in a throwaway filler arc of the anime because they had run out of manga to adapt. 

But one character in particular not just builds on the concepts introduced in DM’s Atlantis season, but shares some interesting similarities with the main villain of that season, Dartz.

Jaden Yuki.

The first thing that caught my attention was the eyes. While yugioh has an almost ridiculous number of characters with magical eyeballs, heterochromia with one turquoise, one orange/yellow? Incredibly specific. I can’t think of a single yugioh character whose weird eye horror even passingly resembles anothers, yet here Jaden and Dartz are. Even further, both of them spend time serving as a “king” with pure gold eyes, before coming into contact with a foreign entity and developing the bilateral asymmetry. 

But Jaden’s eyes are based on Yubels, and more thematically, the colors of the polymerization card art. And Dartz’s seem to be just a random anime villain power up. 

Let’s put a pin in this for now.

The next weird link between the two is in the strange flashback we see at the very end of GX season 3. Jaden sees one of his past lives, when Yubel pledged themselves to be his guardian. In this era, Jaden is the young prince of a vague and never named kingdom. When was this? Where? We don’t know.

But the few characters we see share some interesting design elements with the people of Atlantis.

The primary front skirt panel being this narrow rectangle ending in a point at the end. The gold crown featuring a solid band with a diamond shaped piece right over the forehead embedded with a bright red gem. These capes and the big round brooch thingies. Jaden’s father’s belt has this segmented gold design that looks quite a bit like the necklace of the Atlantian king. (His granddaughter, Kris, has a similar one, I was just running out of space for references.) In fact, both Jaden’s father and the Atlantian king use red gems as their primary design element.

And finally, the biggest detail I want to point out is this little gemstone on human!Yubel’s forehead. Crowns are a pretty universal thing, but a delicate little jewel right on the forehead? That’s an iconic piece of jewelry worn by one Dartz Yugioh. It’s also worth noting, Jaden supreme king armor has the same blue diamond on its forehead. 

Now, before I tie this all together, let me take a quick aside to reassure that yes, I am aware, this sounds like the furthest reach I could possibly make. Sure, the two kingdoms might share some design elements, if you squint. Yeah, Jaden and Yubel might each have one weird feature that Dartz also flaunts. But really, is that enough to posit a connection between the two?

I mean, absolutely, I’ve built fan theories on far less and I WILL DO IT AGAIN

But no. Here’s the plot twist of this post: 

I’m not trying to prove that past!Jaden was the prince of Atlantis.  

Past!Jaden was the prince of New Atlantis.

All right buckle up kids it’s time for me to pull out the thumbtacks and red string also yes this essay is only 50% crack theory and 50% me wanting to infodump about mythology and historical dress. 

Now, ygo Atlantis is based on the “real” Atlantis described by Plato in a trio of his allegorical dialogues, wherein he invents a fictitious evil island nation and then recounts how the ancient Athenians singlehandedly stopped them from invading the known world. And ygo Atlantis actually references parts of the texts and uses some neat Atlantis details that I never see anyone else get right. For one, the three dragons, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermos, are named after the three chapters of the dialogue. Though Hermos is shortened from Hermocrates, but it means someone on the writing team gave at least a passing glance to the source material. Secondly, the layout of the city uses the concentric ring design laid out by Plato.

“-dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain”

 Thirdly, (and this is my favorite) Atlantis itself does not resemble grecian architecture. It is SO easy for writers using Atlantis as a cool fantasy location to just slap some marble pillars on it and call it a day. But while we are getting the dialogue from Plato, and the text states that they encountered hellenistic Greeks, doesn’t automatically make them one in the same. In fact, in the text itself, we are assured that all of the proper nouns are being translated from their original records. And where did these fictitious records come from, you might ask?

Egypt!

So yeah, props to the ygo writers for actually using a fantasy civilization that has legitimate ties to Egypt in their dm filler arc. And it would in fact make sense for Dartz to be in Egypt 5-3,000 years ago, since he would be the one of the only survivors of his kingdom and as such any records that survived would have to have come from him.

I’m getting distracted. Back to Jaden.

While Jaden’s kingdom shares some similarities with the Atlantians, there’s a much stronger historical inspiration at play here.

Greeks.

Specifically, some of the modern perceptions of Spartans. 

The Atlantian long robe retains the shape of the front panel, but it’s been cut short at the knee to form a sort of pteruges (that armored skirt made from strips of leather). They maintain the shape of the Atlantian cap sleeves, but instead of cloth they have been made into bronze pauldrons. The capes, in particular, have now taken on the form of a chalamys, the iconic cloak of ancient Greek military attire. 

We even see some ancient Greeks in capsule monsters, further cementing that Jaden’s people are very much similar, but not quite. They’ve still got some Atlantian flourishes that set them apart. 

And see those capes I can’t shut up about? 

The Atlantians fastened theirs with two big round gemstones, one on each shoulder.

Historically, and in yugioh, Greek military fastened theirs at the right shoulder, using what archeologists like to call a fibula brooch.

And Jaden’s people fasten their cloaks on the left, using that ancient Atlantian gem. 

Do we have enough evidence to even begin to guess what happened to the citizens after Atlantis sank into the ocean? No. But here’s my theory.

Atlantis, an enormous empire, crumbles. Its people were decimated by war and tragedy. A surviving group slowly migrates to Greece, either willingly or through the Athenian conquest. They take refuge with another famous enemy of the Athenians, the Spartans. They slowly assimilate with the city state, blending the two cultures together, but the Atlantian citizens still delineate themselves in small ways through fashion and political influence. These people know of duel monsters, but are hesitant to share that knowledge, fresh on the heels of the spirit war. Orichalcos is rare, coveted, and nowhere near as pure as the stones once used all throughout their city. But it still exists. And some learned few still know how to use it.

Remember Dartz’s forehead jewel? It’s not just a fashion statement, it’s actually a chunk of orichalcos. And remember who else I said had one?

I mean, we’ve seen from flashbacks what overexposure to this stone when paired with the right magicks can do, right? It turns people into monsters.

And it’s not like we have a magic artifact that is literally called the eye of orichalcum. Or even that both these stories strongly feature a mysterious red rock falling from the sky and heralding the forthcoming evil.

Huh. 

This leads to my final piece of evidence:

Anyways, yugioh fanworks should use that fact that Atlantis 100% existed in the ygo world, as well as has been apparently rebuilt/succeeded into a major city, more often. Also, from now on I will be headcanoning Jaden as half Atlantian. Because I can. <3