Yota

Player Information

Name: Lala
Age: 29
Contact details: muteswans
Other characters: applying for Trip, but none accepted yet!

Character Information

Name: Yota
Canon: Maple Town: Palm Town Chapter
Canon Point: post-series
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: unknown, but probably an adult, as he's much taller than Yota, with a deep voice, and cannot enter in a kid's competition himself. Bobby's brothers call him ojisan (uncle), rather than just oniisan (big brother), so he's likely in his mid-twenties or older.

World Information: Palm Town is mostly a clean and relatively modern (1980's Pacific Coast-inspired) seaside city, especially compared to Maple Town (setting of the first season and the heroine's home, based on 1920's Canada), boasting scenic views, clean beaches, and ritzy hotels, but the bad part of town is full of poverty and crime—oh, and did we mention everybody is animals? The cat brothers are, in fact, cats, it's not just a cutesy name. They are full-sized threats to little rabbit and dog girls, but are miniature enemies to adult rabbits, and nearly zero threat to the lions and bulls, unless armed; they will likely be very pint-sized nemesises to humans. Yota is a rather tall tomcat, compared to chubby young Guta, but he's still only a cat in a suit, putting on mobster airs. Imagine Sonic in the live action movie.

Personal History:
(Note: as the series is still currently being subbed into English, but the Arabic dubbed version is complete, my history section will be based on the Arabic dub. While mostly an accurate translation and the version I watched had deleted scenes restored, the Venus Centre dubs do have a tendency to rewrite scripts if they have anything potentially offensive to a Muslim audience, so I'll edit when when I see more Japanese episodes, because for now, I can only go based off the Arabic dub! Thank you.)

Update: in contrast to the Arabic dub, where they’re related brothers who simply weren’t raised together, in the Japanese version, the cat brothers are sworn brothers (not biologically related), they address each other as aniki/older brother and otouto/young brother and live as such, because they took an oath and formed a sort of mentor/student partnership in crime!

Yota does not speak often about his past and even Guta is still learning things about his brother during the series, and they've been together for four years by the final episodes!

Yota and Guta did not grow up together.

Guta lived a more sheltered life on an island with other cats before arriving at Palm Town by boat. He only knew he had a brother, didn't even know he was a thief, and didn't recognize Yota when he saw him! Guta arrived wearing a captain’s hat, while Yota was in the same (canonically very stinky) suit as always, already being pursued for stealing a crate of apples. Guta gets caught up in it and they've been together ever since. (Strikes = only applies to the Arabic dub!)

As it turns out, the cat brothers in the original Japanese version are not biological brothers! The man chasing Yota for stealing apples believes Guta and Yota are related, as they look just like each other. Yota calls him his comrade, but Guta denies it. The man doesn’t believe Guta and throws Yota at him. Guta’s rather upset to be tangled up in this silly heist and says goodbye, but Yota then offers to make him his otoutobun, to have him play the brother role, as he teaches him the ropes. Guta accepts the offer and since then, they’ve been brothers and partners in crime!

Yota grew up living with his mother, who was very poor, and he learned to sew to help her and says if he hadn't, they never would have gotten by. He cries when he thinks of what she might think if she saw him now...

It's a wonder why he doesn't make an honest living as a tailor, but it's hard to tell if he'd just rather get rich quickly or if it's another thing he failed at in his youth and become too embittered to try again.

At present, he lives in some sort of abandoned bar with his younger brother Guta. The bar seemed to have been geared to cats, judging by the slinky cats in the pin-ups and the sign, but no one frequents it aside from themselves, and they have made efforts to convert it into a home; Yota made a curtain for the window, they have two beds to sleep in, and childish crayon drawings [probably by Guta] are hung up along with the cat pin-ups that likely came with the place, and they use a cylinder and some crates as a dining table and chairs.

Although they mainly target the wealthier occupants of Palm Town, they are familiar with the more run-down and crime-ridden distract (it's close to their abandoned bar, it seems) and the other criminals there.

They frequently clash with the main child characters in Team Rocket-like fashion, getting exposed by the kids and usually defeated with the help of adults.

Personality: Of the two cat brothers, Guta and Yota, who are the source of most crimes in the wealthier districts of Palm Town, Yota is the elder brother and the so-called brains of the operation, although his younger brother has little faith in his hare-brained schemes.

Yota is a cruel, temperamental, lazy, good-for-nothing cat who seizes any opportunity to get rich. He is not above taking children hostage, particularly rich heiresses, and if they cross him enough times, he WILL do something cruel like abandon kids in a road through an otherwise empty desert. He frequently shouts abuse at his brother, calling him an idiot, and hitting him on the head at times, but, he also does have a soft spot for him, and throws away what he believed to be a very expensive and rare plant, because it's not worth losing the love of his brother. :')

He's very boastful and overly-confident in his plans; he has a habit of frequently claiming credit for ideas his brother comes up with and claiming "That's exactly what I was thinking of!"/"That's exactly what I was going to say!" ... he also has a lot of faith (a bit too much...) in his brother's ability to execute those plans.

As cruel as Yota can be and as much of a lying con-man Yota is, Yota does have some sense of honour and will return kindness in turn: when Patty's family save him and his brother, forgiving them for stowing away in their car and eating their peanuts (they were starving), they happily do their job of keeping the girls safe—the parents even trust them with them and they really do jump into a waterfall to save the girls from a nasty fall! They're shown very concerned, waiting over the girls until they woke up, with the parents behind them.
After a night stranded in a lighthouse tower during a storm, during which the cat brothers ate all the kid's food (repeatedly denying holding out on them), prompting one boy to allot emergency rations and blankets to everyone, Yota noted the boy took nothing for himself, "he's the kind of guy to put others first"... the next day, just as help arrived, the cat brothers chose to flee, but Yota sent Guta to give the boy a bar of chocolate (they really were holding out!), Yota explaining that it was because they noticed he took nothing for himself the previous night and they wanted to thank him for all that he did.

Their being rather stupid, oafish villains kids have frequently outsmarted have the parents seeing them as less of a threat, although they can be more dangerous if armed... to adults, anyway. Guta is much more reluctant to do evil and Yota has never shot at a child or ordered it, but he certainly has ordered Guta to fire at rich heiress Rolley's father. The most he's ever done was try to leave the Patty, Rolley, and Sheila/Shila stranded.

In fact, Yota seems to have a (smaller) soft spot for children in general, although he's not so noble as to not involve them in crime (either as hostages or as accomplices, as Guta is young enough to enter a competition only for kids), especially if they remind him of his own plight growing up. When Patty and her friends make light of Lamb's fear of spiders, Yota was the only one who showed concern for Lamb after she fell down while running in fear from one. This touched her so much she later pushed on, even when faced with a spider, to save his life.

When Patty's friends from Maple Town visit, Bobby's mischievous younger brothers try to pass themselves off as orphans, crying and looking up at Yota and Guta with sparkling, innocent eyes... the con-man (con-cat?) falls right for it, telling his brother their eyes aren't lying, his own eyes shining, and dedicates the rest of their day and night to making those kids happy, breaking into a fine mansion and stealing food and toys for them with another sob story. The worried kids find the bear cubs forcing the cat brothers to play horsey to exhaustion, surrounded by stolen snacks and toys, and scare the cat brothers off by convincing them the police have arrived. ^^;;
... and Yota didn't regret it one bit. He and Guta reflect on that day happily and Yota wonders what happened to those kids (which they saw as brothers too) and if they're doing well, while Guta is sure of it, as they seemed strong.

Guta is also someone Yota adopted the very first day he met him, so Yota seems to get very quickly attached!

Yota's Japanese name basically means a useless layabout. His Arabic dub name 'Alqam follows the plant/fruit/nut theme most names do in the dub, referring to bitter gourd, but 'alqam is also a symbolic term for referring to the bitterness of life which leaves one jaded. Both rather fit Yota... he won't do any honest work today, after failure after failure in the past, but worked hard growing up and was far less sheltered than his sworn brother Guta.

Yota is a rather selfish, self-centered man (well, cat), as shown by how his dream world has him as a boss and his brother as a lackey in a group of mobster cats serving him, while Guta places him and his brother on equal standing in his dream world.

Yota's secret is that he's afraid of the dark. He's so afraid of the dark, in fact, that he cannot go to the bathroom at night without his little brother at his side! He also wears a bib with a ducky on it to eat at home. ^^;;
Yota loves to eat broccoli and once kicked his brother out of the house/bar because he ate the broccoli he was saving to eat last. It was a very stupid fight.

Outside of saving graces like "won't directly kill a child," "loves his brother deep down," "pities children, especially those who remind him of his own past, and will try to help them," and "has some sense of honour and will repay debts," true to his name, Yota is still very much an awful, lazy, good-for-nothing character, and being offered a good job (unless he owes you) now will have him running for his life! He hates honest work and would much rather scheme to get quick money and he's not above lying and cheating to get it.

CRAU developments: N/A.

Key themes: family comes first, crime doesn't pay, and life in Palm Town isn't so lovely when you're poor.

Main Motivation: money, a comfortable life, and brotherly love. (Had to edit because I put the same thing twice, ffff.)

Skills:

Yota is a cat and as such, he's good at landing on his feet by swiveling his tail, but he's not a particularly strong or skillful cat. He crash lands a lot and the kids send him into the ocean a LOT (I like to imagine it as a particularly big spray-bottle for two very naughty cats), and he's always easily defeated by any enemy larger than him (... adult rabbits are larger than him...), and people frequently punch him in the face and break his sunglasses. He is light (underfed, frequently starving) and physically weak enough for most humans to pick up and toss. He doesn't seem to scratch much and fails to catch seagulls on the beach. ^^;;;

He has great wilderness survival skills and helps teach the kids how to make shelter, sort-of beds from leaves and wood. It was something he practiced while trying to scam people into thinking he was stranded on an island for 50 years, but the actual skills helped the kids survive too!

He can shoot a gun! He is, however, a bumbling fool of a villain, and might mistake a fake for the real thing, and not realize until it's comically late. His brother has mistaken a toy for a real gun before and Yota never bothered to double-check after him before the heist!

Yota's one skill is sewing: he claims he had to help his mother mend clothes frequently growing up, but he can beautifully sew dresses and understands the kinds of stitches needed. He can also embroider and made a very sentimental curtain with silhouettes of his and his brother's faces for the window.

It is worth noting that Yota is either illiterate or sub-literate. Guta and Yota both failed to understand what a patient's medical record was when they saw it; when Guta asked what it was, Yota smoothed it out and seemed to attempt reading it, but he was actually turning it into a paper airplane to amuse himself and his brother, both never really understanding what it was.
There was another time they attempted to forge tickets and you could see the word "ticket" misspelled, crossed-out, and replaced with the correct spelling, likely copied off of a genuine ticket.
Yota asks Guta to write a letter once, but that never wound up happening, because Guta realized there was no way to send it while at sea.

Item: if you want him to be a threat, a loaded pistol would be a good item for him to have with him! Or possibly even a Tommy gun, but he's only shown with such a gun in one poster and carried by an underling in a dream sequence, so... dubious canonicity.

Sample: (based on the TDM!)
With a mischievous gleam in his eye, a sly smile, and an over-exaggerated swagger in his two-legged stride, a striped tabby cat with dark sunglasses circled the hot chocolate dispenser.
"If anyone wants a drink, that'll be ten points! That's right, for just ten points, a nice warm cup'll be yours!"
Wasn't it supposed to be free? Well, yes, but in a strange new place, Yota was still a con-man (con-cat?) and he wasn't going to let any chance slip past his claws! He was going to charge people for as long as he could get away with it!
Never you mind that he was just a cat and most of the people here were strange, very tall, mostly hairless creatures he's never encountered back home, a cat's got to do what he's got to do to get by, right?
The important thing is, he's learned the currency here is called "points" and that's a good enough place to start.
He wondered if he could find any information on Guta's whereabouts too...

Notes: