Random Yugioh Card Lore Rambling – The Elemental Charmers
For being one of the more lastingly popular archetypes of the game, the Charmer girls are surprisingly bereft of in-depth lore. Really, all they seem to have is a vague connection to the Duel Terminal setting via Wynn, and an ambiguous connection to the inexplicably-popular ‘Gagagigo and the Terrible, No-Good, Very-Bad Life Decisions’ storyline.
So here are MY thoughts/theories on them!
To begin with, I think that while the Charmers are tied to Duel Terminal, they are not actually PART of the Duel Terminal setting, at least in the present.
We know from the official lore that Wynn the Wind Charmer was born into the Gusto Tribe, specifically that she is the younger sisters of Winda, Priestess of Gusto. But that Wynn left her tribe at a young age to ‘follow her own path’ (and likely dodged a HUGE bullet given the… well, EVERYTHING that would end up happening to her tribe).
Now with the clear similarities between Wynn and the other Gusto in both appearance and naming, as many others have theorized I think it’s no stretch to imagine that Eria the Water Charmer has a similar connection to the Gishki Tribe. Specifically being the long lost sister of Gishki Ariel. Again, given their similar appearance and names.
Now if Wynn and Eria are both from Duel Terminal, does this mean that Hiita and Aussa are as well? Maybe. Hiita might have connections to the Lavals, and Aussa could be some lost survivor of the X-Blades.
However, I don’t think the question of whether Hiita and Aussa, or even Eria really, are connected to Duel Terminal even really MATTERS.
Because in the present of their story, I don’t think the Charmers are even ON the world of Duel Terminal. With Wynn and potentially Eria having been taken away from her homeworld at a young age.
How and by whom? Why, by the mentor of all four of the Elemental Charmers.
The Dark Magician.
Yeah, this is where the theories start getting a bit wild, but I do have at least two strong(?) pieces of evidence here.
First, the fact that all of the Charmers are spellcasters, which actually becomes rather notable when considering Wynn’s family. Because the Gusto tribe are all psychic-type monsters. Which seems to be representative of the strong mental and spiritual connection the Gusto all have with their winged-beast companions through their powerful shared affinity for WIND.
So Wynn being a spellcaster instead implies that she has learned how to channel her powerful wind affinity not through the mental/spiritual connections of her family, but through magic. Almost certainly after having been taught by a powerful magic-user.
So why Dark Magician in particular?
Simple. Because all of the Charmers just so happen to make use of the Dark Magical Circle. One of the ICONIC symbols associated with the Dark Magician.
See, I have another theory about just why we see this Magical Circle in so many card artworks across the game. Because the Dark Magician has actually been traveling all over the Duel Monsters universe, between lands and even whole worlds, both learning and teaching magic to many students, followers and disciples. I mean for one, I think we can actually assume that the Dark Magician was heavily involved in the creation of Endymion’s Magical Citadel.
And I think the Elemental Charmers were one such group of students taught by the Dark Magician.
At one time, the master of dark magic was passing through the world of Duel Terminal when he happened upon a young Wynn, fresh into her journey, perhaps a young Eria as well, and took the promising young elementalist(s) under his wing. Not long after (or before) and world-hop or two, he would take on Hiita and Aussa as well, and the Dark Magician would begin teaching these four girls the art of magic to channel their powerful elemental affinities.
Some time later, after the four girls had begun growing into their potential, each gaining a strong bond with a familiar tied to their element, the Dark Magician would bid his students farewell, as he felt they had little left to learn from him. And that these four charmers would learn much more from their own journey, and each other, than anything more he could teach them.
And so, with the world of Terminus and its many, many problems long behind them, Wynn, Hiita, Eria and Aussa, along with their loyal familiars would set off on their own adventure together.
Now as for the final two members of the Charmer team, Lyna and Dharc, there are a couple possibilities. For one, it seems like those two are notably younger than the main elemental quartet of girls, given that they are later additions to the archetype and notably don’t have the ‘Channeler’ forms that seem to represent the older, more experienced versions of the Charmers. Also notable is that in the Chronicles animation shorts, we see Wynn, Hiita, Eria and Auusa in a mix of their Familiar-Possessed and Channeler forms with both their original and second familiars, while Lyna and Dharc seem to specifically be in their younger Charmer forms with just their original familiars.
So maybe rather than being mentored by the Dark Magician, Lyna and Dharc were actually taken in later and mentored by the original four girls after their training under the Dark Magician?
Now as for the theory that sooner or later, Eria’s Gigobyte familiar is going to grow up, do something terrible to his mistress and become the ‘young evildoer’, Gagagigo of one of Yugioh’s frankly more overrated card-lore’s…
Frankly I think it is ENTIRELY up in the air whether or not Eria’s Gigobyte is the one who grows up into Gagagigo.
Yes, it did seem very plausible back when we had the rather ominous and foreboding ‘Familiar-Possessed’ artworks that could be read as the Charmers being literally possessed by their familiars, which in turn would provide a natural ‘Start of Darkness’ for Gagagigo.
BUT, with the more recent wave of support for the Charmers and the redesigns of their Familiar-Possessed forms, that read is feeling a lot less plausible. For one, the new Familiar-Possessed designs don’t have the unsettling and foreboding vibes they previously had, and paint the act of ‘familiar possession’ as a far more benign, supportive and symbiotic cooperation between the Charmers and their Familiars.
On top of that, we also have the older/empowered forms of Eria’s familiar referred to as ‘Jigabyte’ and ‘Gagigobyte’, feeling fairly distinct from ‘Gagagigo’. Who also appears in both the Familiar-Possessed redesign and all the other newer Charmer support card-art. Implying there could very likely be some retconning at play.
Given how often Gigobyte shows up in other card art as a generic low-level monster, I think it’s pretty clear there are almost certainly more than one of these little guys running around. So while the Gigobyte who shows up on the card ‘Gigobyte’ is still the one who grows up into Gagagigo, until we get more concrete evidence via more Charmer support, I think it’s entirely plausible if not LIKELY that Eria’s familiar is simply a simply a different Gigobyte.
Finally, personally I really don’t like this whole idea that Eria’s Gigobyte is somehow ‘destined’ to become Gagagigo. It feels like the Charmers’ story is just being hijacked by a totally different story, with Eria now being relegated to being just a side-character, or worse a fridged mentor, of Gagagigo’s story.
While that might have worked back when all we had of this group was the Charmers and their Familiar-Possessed forms, with the more recent support indicating there is probably going to be MORE to the Charmers’ story. So it doesn’t feel appropriate to just chain them to Gagagigo’s story at this point.
Not to mention, as it should be rather clear, I think the Gagagigo story is SUPER overrated. Just because it was one of the first Yugioh card-lore stories doesn’t necessarily make it, you know, good. It’s just this lizard boy getting jerked around by plot, fighting random dudes and being repeatedly redeemed and re-evil’d. I know traumatized sad-bois are a fetish for you people, but you realize you need an actual story and character to make your kinks actually INTERESTING, right?
