about judar from the hit manga magi
hiii everyone, zav speaking! or maybe more people know me as idola in the magi fandom, i dont know, probably. ive been here as idola for the past 9 years after all lol
okay so forgive me because itās been a long time since i reread magi, but i am burdened by feelings and emotions and have GOT to talk about this even if there might be a few details that are a little questionable due to how long itās been.
Ā anywaaayy about judar (and juhaku by extension). i wanted to talk a little bit about judarās identity, both in his mind and in the minds of others
so first of all, this was inspired by the self assessment extra in volume 35 of the manga. in it, there are 4 ticks for rankings with 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. the only relevant ones here are judar and hakuryuu so theirs are the only ones ill post:
judar
future prospects: 4
mental strength: 2
kindness: 1
sense of humor: 2
face: 2
total points: 55/100
(on this judar and hakuryuu have a set of commentsā
judar: i didnāt understand this question very well.
hakuryuu: itās a question about your opinion of yourself. now that you mention it, i never heard that from you.)
hakuryuu
future prospects: 3
mental strength: 4
kindness: 1
sense of humor: 1
face: 4
total points: 65/100
honestly i have absolutely no idea how they are getting 55 and 65 out of 100 with that, but oh well. doesnāt really matter. bottom line is that hakuryuu, who historically hasnāt had a good opinion of himself, thinks of himself more kindly than judar thinks of himself. the only character that has lower self-esteem than judar per this special paper is koumei. koumei!!
basically, what i got from it is that judar has incredibly low self-esteem, and probably not just in the areas theyāre talking about here.
iāve been in the magi fandom forā¦ quite a while now lol and i very clearly remember everyone saying for a long time that judar knows heās hot, and that doesnāt seem to be the case. moreover, judar makes a comment about how he wears the clothes he wears because sinbad told him that people would like him more if he wore them.
judar: the stupid king told me that iād have more success in love wearing middle eastern clothes (ha haā¦ heās so stupidā¦)
apparently he really believed that, because he then proceeded to wear them for literally the next 10 years lol. that might sound like a reach, but when you read the second half of the omake, i canāt imagine any other way to read it?
alibaba: butā¦ you donāt have a girlfriend or a wife, do you?
judar: no, butā¦ everyone at the palace let me do whatever i wanted with them, you know?
so whatās the truth, judar?
comment A: āiāll wear these clothes because theyāll make me more successful with love!ā
comment B: āeveryone let me do whatever i wanted with themā (which he says right after calling women āboringā - yes this points to him thinking men are more interesting, but thatās not the point iām trying to make today)
basically, my point is that judar wanted people to like him when he was younger so he changed the way he dressed completely and kept it that way consistently for the rest of his known life.
so why did he have to do that, then?
normally, if people donāt like you then you try to fix what they donāt like if you want to be their friend. but the reason that people didnāt like judar is, more than anything, because heās āal-thamenās pawn.ā
was that or was that not something he had absolutely no control over lol. itās no wonder that he fixated on and tried to fix other things about himself that he perceived as sub-par, like his appearance, since he obviously couldnāt change the root issue.
honestly, i donāt really think that he was super conscious of that fact or anything. but i do think that itās what ohtaka intended to portray when writing these aspects of his character.
that being said, letās back up a little bit.
we know that judar wasnāt originally born to al-thamen, but was taken soon after and then treated as if he was a priest/oracle, something holy and above others, to keep him from thinking too hard about anything else. and it worked! he thought of himself as a great magi, and thought reasonably well of the people who treated him like a great magiāsee his childhood crush on gyokuen (revealed in a sticker). but on the other hand, he also wanted someone to treat him like a kidāsee him telling hakuryuu to give him one of his brothers back when they were kids because he wanted to be a little brother ;-;
he couldnāt have that, though, because hakuryuuās brothers burnt to a crisp, something that everyone saw him as complacent inā¦ despite him being a young kid at the time. no, he didnāt do anything to stop it. but how could he? he was eight years old
hakuryuu, who had been his friend up until then, started to treat him differently afterwards, again for no fault of judarās own. im sure that this hurt after everything that happened in snb, with seren dying and sinbad hating his guts (a dynamic that would continue for the foreseeable future).Ā
so what was judar to do? treat them coldly in return? no! he treated hakuryuu like a friend just like how he used to. sure, he always asked him to go to dungeons with him, because he was a great magi and great magi can choose great kings and he knows that hakuryuu would be a great kingā¦ but heās still eight years old. thereās really nothing he can do to win hakuryuuās friendship back, even though he hadnāt really done anything wrong on a personal level.
now i hear what you might be thinkingāal-thamenās goons, sinbad, and hakuryuu arent the only people in judarās lifeā¦ and yes, thatās true. but the way he treats them is so obviously different from the way he treats his other king vessels. the only one that even comes close is kougyoku, who he teases and seems to be friends with, in a way. they definitely donāt have a truly antagonistic relationship despite his relentless teasingā¦ but he doesnāt take her seriously, really. i guess she doesnāt have the same potential in his eyes as sinbad and hakuryuu do. so he keeps bugging those guys instead of being satisfied with what he has.
i do think that sinbad and hakuryuu having extremely negative feelings towards al-thamen contributes to judarās impressions on themā¦ but i donāt think that he has any solid perception of his intuition at this point.
so basically, timeline wise, we have:
judar being born into a small village in the far east. itās unclear on if he was born into kou, gai, or go, but his village was soon slaughtered so what does it matter (for the purpose of this essay)
he was raised into al-thamen, presumably by gyokuen primarily since sheās the reason he was in kou to begin withā¦ but he was really, really young when they captured him judging by the pictures we were shown. so he probably had a random woman nurse him. he is shown wearing kouās clothes in the reim arc in snb so when heās 4 years old. at that time, his rukh was white
judarās powers as a magi are used to help get metal vessels and djinns for a huge number of people. itās unclear to me which dungeon he summoned first, but either way by the time he was taken to parthevia, he wasnāt a stranger to summoning them or having kings.
his rukh is forced to turn black, likely via arbaās āmental magicā
flashforward to three years later and he grows somewhat close to serendine, who treats him like a little brother at times. heās ultimately part of the reason why she dies so iām sure that hurts, but he doesnāt really talk about it. i canāt even begin to imagine how much itād hurt for this to happen, then to go to kou and have the fire happen, and have his comforting friendship with hakuryuu - the first and last person he could consider a friend, in all likelihood - go up in flames soon after.
as he gets older, he continues to collect king vessels. even so, he makes it a point to always ask hakuryuu to become his king. why? hakuryuu doesnāt like him anymoreā¦ at least, thatās what he says. maybe judar believes him, maybe he doesnāt. we really donāt know.
in a meeting with sinbad, heās told that heāll have more luck in love if he dresses different, so he does just that.
people at home let him do whatever he wants, but it doesnāt fill the void so to speakĀ - he calls it boring instead of fulfilling. it seems that heās grown tired of being the great magi, the āotherā who others canāt understand because they donāt know anything about him. they take advantage of his powers without understanding or caring on a deeper level (unlike sinbad and hakuryuu who donāt take advantage of him at all, whose opinions he seems to value a lot more)
so thatās all for pre-magi canon.
as for magi canon itself, the first time we see judar is him outside of the dungeon that alibaba conquers if iām not mistaken. he has no personal interest in alibaba, but the others in al-thamen have an interest in aladdin. when judar learns about aladdin, it probably doesnāt feel too greatā¦ after all, judar has always been special, and thatās why everyone treats him differently, right?
because heās special, heās powerful, heās everything that nobody else will ever be.
ā¦but heās also nothing that anyone else wants to be, because heās al-thamenās pawnā¦ something that heās probably becoming conscious of for the first time after he learns about aladdin in the early parts of the story.
he gets to see aladdin with alibaba, a king who he chose without anyone elseās input. he gets to see how free aladdin is.
and he gets to see how unfortunate he himself is after aladdin activates solomonās wisdom and shows him that heās not special after all. not against aladdin, and not to al-thamen eitherāyes, heās their magi. yes, he was their perfect pawn who they went to great efforts to obtain.
but he doesnāt have solomonās wisdom. he isnāt aladdin.
heās not their ideal anymore.
so what is he if heās not special?
heās ājudar,ā but thatās not the name that his parents gave him or anything. itās a name that al-thamen gave him when they essentially took him captive.
heās been going by a name that wasnāt his and fighting battles that arenāt really his. not only that, but heās wearing clothes that were someone elseās idea and attracting people who only want him for his power. who would he be if he wasnāt a magi, anyway?
nothing, really
heād be nothing, and heād have no one
nobody wants to be around him because they think heās a pawn, and for the first time, he readily agrees with them, and that makes him angry.
(side note: at some point during the balbadd arc, i think before solomonās wisdom is activated but i donāt remember clearly, judarās rukh tries to leave his body but is forced back inside by al-thamen. the man canāt even die without them dictating if itās okay or not. like come on.)
so after the balbadd arc, judarās kind of a whirlwind of emotions. he āfake criesā at sinbad in sindria, which i always thought was funny because thereās no way in hell that he wasnāt even a little bit sincere in that. āiām also one of al-thamenās victims!ā we know you are. you just donāt want to be pitied so you backtrack and laugh about it instead
thereās a cute moment around there where ithnan says to be careful about hurting hakuryuu because heās judarās favorite, bit AWWW because itās been 11 years since judar and hakuryuu were truly friends and heās still judarās favorite, judarās still talking about him and hyping him up, even though he most certainly was not hyping him up to the right person lol
from here we have a bit of a stalemate for judar, who wants to have the power to escape al-thamen but just. doesnāt. thereās nothing he can do alone, but nobody wants to take his hand because heās with al-thamen, and the proof is in his black rukh.
he clearly has someone in mind, though. he wants hakuryuu and urges him to take his hand now more than ever, knowing that they are the same in this sense, and that together they can cover each otherās weaknesses and break themselves free of their fates.
hakuryuu goes with judar when the medium implodes in magnostadt and judar takes the depraved rukh from it. from there, they set more plans into motion
i wonāt bore you with a recap of the Best Arc in All of Manga History (the juhakuā¦ i mean kou arc) because tbh you should go read it (again) yourself, itās literally a masterpiece, BUT the key points of it as far as judarās concerned are:
he did want to take aladdinās hand and be friends āat one point,ā but quickly decided against it because of the anger in his heart
he understands that itās the right thing to do, but just canāt forgive the world enough to do it. he knows that he could fight al-thamen with everyone else but he just canāt do it, because he knows that nobody shares this anger with him, and nobody would let him do the things he wants with it. but after everything, thatās all that he really wants:
to do something that he himself decided on doing, not what others wanted him to do. he wants to be himself, not what other people want him to be.
āwe will destroy this world and create it anewā - the iconic line
āthis feels just likeā¦ il ilah itselfā¦ā - belial when judar attacks
not too long later, at the battle camp, judar is shown to be struggling to subordinate the huge quantity of black rukh he obtained from magnostadt, but he doesnāt regret it or anything. heās getting all sorts of useful information from it. just like how hakuryuu is learning how to use his new powers from belial, judar is understanding how to parse the information from mogamettās rukh.
side note #143: hakuryuu knowing how judarās mind works is so cute. him telling judar to learn this magic āor is it too difficult?ā ALWAYS works on him lol. how did they grow so close if they only knew each other for a year, between ages 7-8 for judar and 5-6 for hakuryuu, before the fire? like thatās crazy to me. they act like they have TONS of history outside of that. i feel like they do, too, itās all just very controlled interaction on hakuryuuās side. he holds back so much, it must feel so good to justā¦ be on each otherās sides again, especially knowing that they understand each other and want to be together DESPITE everything else being so fucked up ;-;
anyway onto the next point: the isolation barrier
so this is basically also a side note, but the isolation barrier was only mentioned/used twice: once in the alma torran arc, where they say it was invented by magicians who want to commit suicide so that their borg doesnāt stop them, and then when judar activates it to let hakuryuu kill gyokuen. itās impossible for judar to do any damage to her after that but if it works it works!
then thereās the ultra iconic āif you hadnāt raised me, i would be moreā¦ moreā¦ moreā¦! huh? what was it, again? it slipped my mind.ā
rahhh i love judar. i donāt think i need to explain that really, i think itās pretty self-explanatory. classic judar knowing the feelings in his mind but not knowing how to put it into words
as for the battle with aladdin, judar plays with the idea of summoning the medium because itād be his idea and no one elseās. except that itās literally not, because he was essentially being raised since childhood to become the medium. oops
anyway, i already talked about the stuff that was revealed in the dark continent and with the mother dragon. the rest of judar is also pretty self-explanatory once you think back on all the other things that have been revealed until then and in extra papers and omakes after it too
the things that stand out most to me in the final arc are when judar comes back, how he goes straight to his village instead of attempting to find hakuryuu (despite what yunan likely told them) to pick up where they left off, and then telling hakuryuu about everything even though heās been shown to be a pretty private person who doesnāt talk about himself much
and thenā¦ at the very end of all of this, when he fights sinbad, he finally gets to say that heās satisfied for the first time in his life, because he has hakuryuu who understands him and wants to be with him just because heās himself, not because heās a powerful magi ;-; i have so many feelings and emotions itās actually insane
and yes i DID just write a 3k essay on a magi character in god's year of 2024. sue me
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