Kiyoshi Kogami

Kiyoshi Kogami

Names
English	Kiyoshi Kogami
Japanese Japanese 鴻（こう）上（がみ） 聖（きよし） Base 鴻上 聖 Furigana こうがみ きよし Rōmaji Kōgami Kiyoshi
Personal
Gender	Male
Relatives
Roken Kogami (son)
Career
Organization	Knights of Hanoi SOL Technologies (formerly)
Appearances
Anime debut	Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS episode 0033: "Contact"
Appears in Anime Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Voice actors
English	Tyler Bunch
Japanese	Takayuki Sugō
Kogami, Kiyoshi

Dr. Kiyoshi Kogami (鴻（こう）上（がみ） 聖（きよし） Kōgami Kiyoshi) is a character appearing in the Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS anime, and one of the primary antagonists in the first season. He is Varis's father, and a member of the Knights of Hanoi. Formerly a researcher at SOL Technologies, he undertook the Hanoi Project in order to create what he believed would be humanity's successor, the Ignis. When the project was revealed to SOL Technologies, he was imprisoned and infected with a computer virus and declared dead. His physical body left comatose, he continued to exist as an avatar in the network for seven years, and he eventually decided that the Ignis would turn on humanity and decided that they needed to be destroyed.

Design

Appearance

Kogami's real body has tan skin and wears a grey outfit, and is frail and thin due to being coma-ridden for seven years. Inside LINK VRAINS, Dr. Kogami retains the appearance he had prior to his infection. He is a tall fair-skinned man with black and grey hair and mustache, and yellow eyes. He wears a white coat with red outlines, a dark undershirt with red stripe, black pants and brown shoes.

Personality

Like Varis, Dr. Kogami believes the Ignis to be a threat. However, since he did create the Ignis, he has slight regret about destroying them. Dr. Kogami is both calm and collected, and he rarely shows any emotion apart from a brief smug smile when Akira Zaizen got caught in his trap. Similar to Yusaku, he greatly desires revenge on the ones who wronged him, but Kogami is able to put this aside and focus on what he believed to be the more important task at hand, and he encourages his son to do the same regarding his rivalry with Playmaker.

Roken describes Kogami as a visionary. Dr. Kogami is entirely unconcerned with the casualties of his actions if they are for what he believes to be the greater good; he mercilessly tortured the six children that he had kidnapped for his Hanoi Project, and went ahead with his plan to use the Tower of Hanoi to wipe out the network, despite the massive casualties it would cause, himself included.

Abilities

Dr. Kogami can teleport himself inside LINK VRAINS. In addition, he has superior programming and hacking skills, even helping out his son in dire need from a remote distance.

Etymology

His first name Kiyoshi means "holy" or "saint", while his last name Kogami can be translated as "great above".

Biography

History

Dr. Kogami and his son Roken lived in Den City for most of Roken's life in a villa above the Stardust Road, which Kogami showed to his son when he was little. Kogami worked as a researcher at SOL Technologies. Forseeing that humanity would soon face numerous challenges and that their evolution was limited by their physical forms, Dr. Kogami planned and executed the Hanoi Project ten years prior to the start of the series. Under his instruction, six children were kidnapped and forced to Duel in VR, and they were electrocuted and starved when they lost. He was assisted by Alec and Klarissa Turner, who didn't like the project due to its inhumane nature, as well as Dr. Genome. This was all for the purpose of creating the successors of humanity; A.I. with free will, who Kogami named the "Ignis". In the dub, Kogami instead intended the Ignis to be allies of humanity rather than their successors. But the cries of the tortured children tore at the heart of his son Roken, who alerted the authorities. SOL Technologies imprisoned Dr. Kogami in order to cover up the incident, as well as to attempt to monopolize the Ignis for profit.

Dr. Kogami tries to warn SOL Technologies about the Ignis.

Three years after the Hanoi Project, Kogami began to fear that the Ignis were evolving too quickly. Kogami conducted billions of simulations that concluded that the Ignis would eventually turn against humanity and destroy them. He brought his concerns to SOL Technologies, but he was disbelieved and he was infected with a computer virus. As a result, he was believed to have died and was publicly declared dead, but his consciousness continued to exist in the network. Roken, Klarissa, Alec, and Genome were able to remove the virus and recreate his mind in the network, and Roken continued to care for his comatose body.. Believing that SOL Technologies had infected him to silence him, Kogami revealed his findings to Roken, and they formed the Knights of Hanoi, with the intent of eradicating all the Ignis within the network, Roken taking the name "Varis" within LINK VRAINS. However, their first attempt to destroy the Ignis two years later failed when the Dark Ignis escaped from the Cyberse and hid it from the Knights of Hanoi.

Unbeknownst to Kogami, both of these misfortunes had been orchestrated by the Light Ignis, who not only infected Kogami with the virus, but was also the sole source of the Ignis turning against humanity, a fact Kogami would have eventually discovered had he not been infected and conducted individual simulations on the Ignis.

Knights of Hanoi

Dr. Kogami approached Varis in LINK VRAINS, who was unable to find the Dark Ignis, which had been captured by Playmaker. Kogami promised to make a new program, and suggested they could draw Playmaker out and defeat him, then capture the Ignis. After their attempt to use Blue Angel to defeat Playmaker failed, Varis wondered how Dr. Kogami would cope with the Ignis' destruction. Dr. Kogami explained that it was a painful decision, but Varis reminded him of the importance of destroying the Ignis and the Cyberse.

During Varis's Speed Duel against Playmaker, the latter had the Ignis, which he had named Ai, conjure a Data Storm. This allowed Dr. Kogami to send a card to Varis. Dr. Kogami watched the Duel between Playmaker and Varis, but much to his surprise, Playmaker summoned "Firewall Dragon" and destroyed the "Fire Prison". Dr. Kogami was still pleased, as Playmaker had 600 LP left, and expected Varis to defeat him. Dr. Kogami was surprised to learn that Playmaker wanted revenge for what had happened ten years ago. Spectre arrived, as Kogami noted how scary fate could be. Varis was eventually defeated, and his arm bitten off by Ai, but Kogami saved Varis and extracted him from the Data Storm. As Varis returned, Dr. Kogami stated that he was surprised Varis let his guard down, deducing it was due to Playmaker mentioning the Lost Incident. Varis apologized, and as his hand regenerated, he claimed that next time would be different. Dr. Kogami stated that Varis didn't need to think of that, and seeing how they could not retrieve Ai, he went to execute their other plan, and stated that he needed time to make preparations for that.

Kogami and Varis went to a deep pit above one of LINK VRAINS data processing centers, where he showed Varis the seed of the Tower of Hanoi, which would grow into a "fruit" that would destroy the whole network, including LINK VRAINS. Kogami then released the seed, which fell into the pit.

During the Deleted incident, Dr. Kogami contacted Varis, informing his son that his program would soon be finished. Varis was depressed, and told his father he wanted to confront someone. Kogami sensed Varis wished to face Playmaker and permitted this as long as it did not take too much time.

Dr. Kogami later appeared in LINK VRAINS and confronted Akira Zaizen after imprisoning him, explaining what had happened to him, and that the Tower of Hanoi would annihilate all data on a worldwide scale, before vanishing. He later approached Varis, asking if he had been able to learn Playmaker's identity, but Varis claimed that he hadn't.

Dr. Kogami appears during the second Speed Duel between Playmaker and Varis.

During Varis and Playmaker's second Speed Duel, Dr. Kogami appeared to Varis after he lost a hand trying to enter the Data Storm around the Tower of Hanoi's core, stopping movement within the Storm. He apologized for not being as good a father as he should have been to Roken, and claimed that he hadn't wanted to involve him in their crusade against the Ignis, but that he needed him. Uncaring of the results, he sacrificed his strength, giving Varis the power he needed to enter the Data Storm and use "Storm Access" to obtain "Topologic Gumblar Dragon", but this exerted the last of his energy and his physical body perished.