The Locked and Unlocked Potential of the Ignis
I was on Discord with @saltiest-coconut, @rebdvision, and @lanceryall and I mentioned something very interesting about the six Ignis in Yugioh Vrains, particularly the summoning type monsters in their decks.
I noticed of all of the six Ignis, only Ai and Flame have different summoning type monsters in their Cyberse decks when they’re used by Yusaku and Takeru. Both Yusaku and Takeru are shown using other summonings other than Link - they can use Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ monsters. On the other hand, Earth, Aqua, Windy, and Lightning didn’t have any other summoning type monsters in their decks - all four of them used only Link Monsters.
After observing this, I came up with a theory on why that may be. My theory is that if the Ignis are with their human origins, they can grow exponentially and unlock their hidden potential within their Cyberse decks. Likewise, if the Ignis are not with their origins, they cannot grow and their hidden potential is locked away. This can be seen as Yusaku and Takeru are able to utilize different types of Cyberse and Salamangreat monsters in their duels the more time they spend with Ai and Flame.
Earth and Spectre we’re unable to meet due to both of them being on opposing sides. The few times we see Earth duel, we see him use only G Golem Link monsters. It’s possible that if Earth met Spectre and they teamed up, the two of them could have combined their powers and unlock Earth’s potential and us other Summoning monsters. Sadly, Earth died before he could meet Spectre so Earth was denied his chance to grow and unlock his G Golem deck’s potential.
Windy was originally friendly and may have been able to team up with his Origin if Lightning didn’t corrupt his programming. When that happened, Windy became hostile and attacked his Origin, which permanently destroyed his chances of growing and unlocking his own potential with his Stormrider Deck. We see this in his duels with Ryoken and Takeru as Windy didn’t use any other type of Stormrider monsters besides Link monsters.
Aqua may have teamed up with Aoi and became partners, but since Miyu was Aqua’s Origin, Aqua was unable to unlock her Marincess deck’s potential without Miyu. In fact, Lightning was the one who attacked Miyu in order to sabotage Aqua’s chances of stopping him by cutting her power in half. That is evident when Aoi only uses Marincess Link monsters when dueling with Aqua’s deck when before she used Fusion with her Trickstars. That is not to say Aoi didn’t put up a good fight with Aqua’s deck; she and Aqua did everything they could with the resources they had in their duels.
Finally there is Lightning and while he had Jin next to him, Lightning did not grow at all. Jin was taken hostage and had his consciousness removed by Lightning while Lightning was only using Jin as a shield to protect himself. If Lightning actually tried to befriend Jin and Jin accepted his partnership, then it may have been possible for Lightning to grow and unlock his own potential within his Armatos Legio deck and used other monsters besides Link monsters. Lightning could have possibly changed his fate and gotten a happy end if he chose to team up with Jin to prove Dr. Kogami’s simulations wrong, but he chose not to. By choosing to use Jin instead of teaming up with him, Lightning sealed away both his own growth and potential and guaranteed his very own demise with his actions.
That is the theory I came up with after observing the duels the Ignis were a part of whether they were with partners or on their own.