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A brief thought on the parallels of the Subway Bosses, The Tao Trio, and Warden Ingo's place

@waywardstation just made an amazing post on her thoughts of Warden Ingo's parallels to Kyurem. Nothing in the game directly connects the two, just like nothing in the game connects the Subway Bosses to the Dragons in Generation V. But the connections are still there regardless, because Game Freak made sure to fill Unova with so much symbolism.

These are the basic thoughts that connect each Man to their Dragon.

Subway Boss Ingo - Ideals; Aspire to greatness, never give up in your journey

Subway Boss Emmet - Truth; You are who you are, there is no need for a mask

Warden Ingo - Void; What is there when you lose who you are? No drive for greatness, nothing to mask. Ideals, Truths, nothing matters except the ground beneath your feet.

In each game that they appear, Ingo and Emmet are relatively flat characters. In Gen 5, they have enough personality to stick in your mind, and nothing past. And in PLA, Ingo's whole personality is "I lost my memory and am depressed, but have hope". Instead, we end up looking at word choice, and in the Subway Bosses cases, other media.

Subway Boss Ingo, across most media, embodies Ideals. He has his eyes to the future, always pushing himself and others to continue onwards. He frames battling and training as a journey ("What can I see after winning, winning, and winning? Where is my destination?"; "Your talent has brought you to the destination called Victory!"; "There is no terminal called End in your life!"), most often when he is victorious. He seeks to create his Ideal self, and wants to push others to do the same.

This comes up in Pokemon Masters EX as well, where the "no terminal" line returns (in an appropriately spooky tone), he also spends time in the Day With Ingo story event talking about how he seeks to better himself and "break through the mold of [his] past self". This event is also the first time he mentions the phrase "greater heights", which appears another 6 times in various snippets in Masters. And finally, we have a triple whammy of travel metaphors for growth in his level up lines.

For Subway Boss Emmet, his connection to Truth is admittedly a bit more tenuous. He doesn't have any tendency for truth-seeking or investigations (outside of the famous behavior in the manga where he likes to eavesdrop on drama, which gossip isn't exactly truthful), but what he has is a strong showing of being truthful, even if he ends up being blunt or disrespectful.

As a consequence of his writing in Japanese giving him a very casual way of speaking, the English translation has him speak in shorter clips, just the bare essentials. The naked truths of his thoughts. He doesn't seek the Truth, or give a Universal Truth; Emmet is True to himself and to those around him. (As a side note, I love when people give power to other usages of the word True through Reshiram. I did it in my fic with a turn of phrase, but I've seen it done beautifully in other works too).

In Pokemon Special, Emmet doesn't hide the truth of why they asked White to train on the Battle Subway ("We're studying you as an example of a Trainer who gets overwhelmed and loses every battle!" "That's not nice, Emmet."), not because he is intending to be rude (Ok, a little bit), but because that *is* what they are using her for. In the games, he speaks of how Pokemon battles can be decided on luck ("I won against you. But I think I just got lucky."), because the Truth of the matter is, you can be highly trained and just have a bad day or get hit by a critical hit. But, most importantly, he believes that battles must be serious for them to be fun. Because what fun is there in putting up a fake fight, when you could just be True to yourself?

Now, to speak on the connection of Warden Ingo to Kyurem, we must first understand what Kyurem is to Zekrom and Reshiram. On a surface level, it is a Husk, a leftover revenant that can be reassembled into a simulacrum of the Original being. But looking into the actual symbolism of them all is where you find threads of connection to the Warden.

Reshiram, the Dragon of Yin, is representative of a more static element, receptive of change but passive in how it does so. It is a recursive existence that reaches out and pulls back towards itself - Everyone has an individual Truth, but that is still able to be changed by The Truth. However, one does not go out and change The Truth, only altering the perception of it while it passively exists. You cannot change what is already there, only create something new. In comparison, Emmet is never really shown to focus on the future, but rather on the present. He knows of the Truth in his life, and while it can be changed by present actions, he knows that he cannot go back to change it, so there is no need to try, or to hide it.

Zekrom, the Dragon of Yang, is active, ever expanding, and pushes up against those around it in it's search for Ideals. Ideals cause you to seek out a goal, to leave your home, your comfort zone, and push away from the past. To represent Ideals is to be in constant flux; Settling into a form makes you into a Truth, as an Ideal is a goal, something attainable, yet unreachable. We've gone over Ingo's future-forward gaze, constantly thinking about what is to come. Life is a journey, and every step you take in life is a step to self-improvement.

Kyurem is a Husk, a Shell. According to Bulbapedia, it is representative of Wuji ("Without a roof"), the absense of Yin and Yang, or "The Ultimate Nothingness". For this reason, I personally also attribute to it Mu, a concept of non-existence and negative space, specifically the lack of something normally there (modern Japanese actually uses "mu-" as a prefix the same way English has the suffix "-less"). Interestingly, the Japanese transliteration of Wuji is "Mukyoku" (lit. Non-polar, another translation of Wuji), connecting the two concepts neatly. In short, Kyurem represents Nothing and Everything.

Kyurem was supposedly the Original Dragon, the deity of Unova that represented Truths and Ideals in unison, a embodiment of Yin and Yang's harmony. In a sense, the Original Dragon was an embodiment of Everything, Unova's spirit of unity. Then, with the war between the Twin Princes (another pair also frequently compared to Ingo and Emmet, in case you think I forgot my boys), it was split into 2, but secretly 3, parts. This third secret part became Kyurem, a being lacking in its original qualities, leaving Nothing but the Husk.

Now, finally, we can get to everyone's favorite uncle, Warden Ingo. His connection to Kyurem is probably the least intentional of them all (which is saying something, because I'm honestly convinced that the Subway Bosses' own connections aren't intentional, but rather just a result of how Unova games were written with Truth vs. Ideal being ingrained heavily), but there still is one. As Wayward says in her fateful post, "Warden Ingo is an empty husk of who he once was ever since he was separated from his life, and from Emmet." Ingo as the Subway Boss may not have embodies the Everything that the Original Dragon has, but pairing with Emmet so closely still meant that Truth and Ideals mixed so cleanly that it might as well have been Everything.

However, the most important connection for Warden Ingo are the concepts of Wuji and Mu. To be "the Ultimate Nothingness" or "Non-Polar" means to be devoid of Everything, yet still have the capability to be far more than Nothing. The singular concept of Mu may mean that Warden Ingo is missing who he is and was, but that is not who we grow know in the game; We connect with a man who is slowly piecing together his sense of self, remembering facets of his past and growing happier with who he can be. Thus, the Mu transitions into Wuji, a void that isn't Empty so much as lacking.

The importance of distinction is that Mu is by nature Empty, while Wuji is Empty and Everything, limitless and confined. Similarly, Ingo is devoid of what made him him (His drive for self-improvement is impaired, even while he pushes the player to climb to greater heights), but becomes something new in the meta-narrative of the story. His actual, plot-related story ends when you quell Electrode and he becomes a challengeable NPC at the Training Grounds, but he becomes something of a kindred spirit in the greater plot of the game. He's like you, a Faller who has lost themselves, and also like you, an avid battler who pushes the system to it's limits (especially in the Path of Solitude).

In short, the connection between Kyurem and Warden Ingo isn't anything in the text, as Kyurem has no explicit in-game theming attached to it like Zekrom and Reshiram, and Warden Ingo doesn't have strong philosophical points that seeps out of the words he says to you. But when you look at the meta-theming for Kyurem, and subsequently Warden Ingo's meta-narrative, the connections become clearer.

Does some of this make no sense? Of course! A lot of this is extrapolating what was said in Wayward's post, and what came from my head as I thought of it. A lot of the connections of the twins to the Dragons has been discussed since 2010, but for all intents and purposes, Warden Ingo is a different character from Subway Boss Ingo. Narratively, he is the same person, hence why his appearance is a tragedy in Legends Arceus, one which we never get to solve. But on a meta level, he functions so differently, and lives so differently, that the themes he inhabits do not match up to the Subway Boss in any way. To end this on a sad note, Warden Ingo is exactly like Kyurem - Broken. He has lost what made him whole, and we've been shown that just reinserting Ideals isn't enough. Hopefully, if Game Freak decides to touch upon the Warden once more, we can find a way to reinsert his Truths as well.

#this is great op #I never thought hard on them #I just like them and that's it #and I just like Warden Ingo most #that is enough for me #but this analysis is amazing

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