Kyoya Gaen

"I believe that the problems of this world are too great to resolve. The only solution is to take control of the adult world so we can rebuild things from scratch."

- Kyoya Gaen about his goals

Kyoya Gaen is the main antagonist of the Future Card Buddyfight Season 1 anime. He is the head of Gaen Financial Group, a company that funds Aibo Academy and produces Core Deck Cases and Dark Core Deck Cases. He's widely popular and loved by most of the world, but he's secretly a cruel and spiteful person who uses his charisma to manipulate others.

History
In his younger years, Kyoya visited a very poor town where he met Rouga Aragami and played a Buddyfight game against him. After the game, he offered Rouga his friendship, which was accepted. Their friendship remained for years, one day during a Buddyfight he made a misplay when he called a Monster without paying its call cost. Rouga noticed but didn't say anything, fearing he would hurt his friend by calling him out on doing a mistake.

At some point, Kyoya inherited the Gaen Financial Group and discovered a monster known as "Demonic Demise Dragon, Azi Dahaka" as well as Darkness Dragon World, a Buddyfight World believed to be nothing but an urban legend. He also discovered that Darkness Dragon World wants to invade the Earth and Disaster Force, a mysterious power that makes the Buddyfight cards' effect real and fuels portals to Darkness Dragon World. Kyoya began developing Dark Core Deck cases in secret, a special deck case that allows the user to freely use Disaster Force.

Kyoya was allegedly involved in an unknown event called "The Disaster", which he blames adults for. He showed his Disaster Force to his Rouga and invited him to use it as well. Rouga was hesitant and suspicious about his friend's actions, but accepted. Eventually, Kyoya formed a group of Disaster Force users called "Disaster", Kyoya lied to most of the group telling them that they will use Disaster Force to protect the world.

Personality
On the outside, Kyoya is a polite, cool, and easy going youngster widely known and popular. He is seen as a nice guy with good intentions and is widely supported by basically everyone.

In reality, Kyoya is a cruel and manipulative person without the slightest sign of remorse, shame, or guilt. Kyoya views friendship as nothing but a tool to turn people into pawns. He frequently gives others tests to judge their loyalty and utility without them realizing it. If anyone fails him or he decides that they outlived their utility, he gets rid of them without any hesitation.

He has no problem giving people false hopes and promises of friendship or power to keep them loyal. Kyoya can go as far as to feed people with despair and darkness until they breakdown and become their pawns, as seen with Tasuku Ryuenji. He's a clever strategist, almost always having backup plans to ensure his bigger plans work without any problem.

Kyoya is a genius orator, he can effortlessly convince large crowds to support him and approve his questionable behavior. If confronted about his plans, he can easily turn the audiences against those who defy him and make himself look even better. He enjoys playing the organ and frequently does during Disaster reunions.

Biography
Kyoya is introduced after the Aibo Buddy Cup arc, when he hosts a cruiser party for the tournament's participants with the intention of finding potential Dark Core users. He also plans to witness "Future Force", an ability with the same effects as Disaster Force, in person, so he requests his Buddy Monster Azi Dahaka to attack the cruiser, forcing Tasuku Ryuenji to use Future Force to save everyone despite having been restricted from using that ability due to the danger it puts public in.

He sends Sueroku Shido and Seiichi Nobari to sabotage the Buddy Police and put restrictions to Tasuku in order to make him question the Buddy Police's honor. Sometime later he has a Disaster reunion to reveal that he has found 3 strong candidates to join their group: Tasuku, Kiri Hyoryu, and the main protagonist Gao Mikado. He begins sending his group members to Aibo Academy to spy those targets and push them into darkness so they accept Dark Cores. Davide Yamazaki, one of his servants, successfully recruits Kiri to the group, who later takes the alias "Grim Reaper", a criminal who steals people's buddy monsters so Disaster can experiment on them. With his influence he gets Nobari to become the Buddy Police commander and fires Tasuku, further breaking his sense of justice.

Gao and Tasuku launch an attack against Disaster's operation base, but he simply lets them infiltrate and allows Gao to confront Kiri while he offers Tasuku the chance to fight against 2 of his subordinates, Davide and Magoroku Shido. Before the fight begins he sneaks a Jackknife "Gold Ritter", a powerful card that allows Tasuku to wins a 2 vs 1 fight, but at the cost of turning his Buddy into a mindless weapon, hurting their bond and Tasuku's judgement even more. After the fight, Kyoya challenges Tasuku himself and wins. After his victory Kyoya offers Tasuku to join Disaster, and tells him that he used to be a mindless puppet of a corrupt Buddy Police that didn't do anything to correct the Disaster (when actually its the exact opposite, Kyoya is the one who corrupted Tasuku). Confused, guilt ridden, and desperate to do justice, Tasuku breaks down and joins Disaster, abandoning Jack in the process.

Just then, he returns with an unconscious Tasuku to the meeting room for Gao to see. Blinded by anger, Gao inadvertently activates his Future Force and destroys Disaster's base. Shortly after he announces his Buddyfight tournament, the Gaen Cup, which will be broadcasted worldwide. Kyoya sends Gao an invitation and forms 2 teams for the tournament. The first with Davide, Magoroku, and Terumi Kuchinawa, but she leaves the team and is replaced by Gremlin, one of his most reliable and powerful subordinates. The second team is composed of Rouga, his assistant Sofia Saharov, and the mysterious "Purgatory Knight" who is actually Tasuku.

He plans to have Terumi join another in a desperate attempt to prove her worth to Kyoya, but when she fails he decides that she is no longer useful and has Sofia erase her memories. During Rouga's first fight his Disaster Force activates "accidentally", and Kyoya takes the chance to reveal its existence to the world, calling it a "miraculous power". The entire audience falls for his lies and Kyoya's popularity increases even more. He pretends to be surprised when the Purgatory Knight is revealed to be Tasuku and malevolently enjoys watching Gremlin's fight against Gao. He actually planned Gremlin to lose and convinced him to improve his deck.

The night before the Gaen Cup final, the Buddy Police is attacked to get rid of Nobari and Sueroku. When they beg for Kyoya to help them, he simply decides that now that he has Tasuku on his side their services are no longer needed and allows them to be arrested.

The day of the finals, he threatens Rouga with ending their friendship if he loses but admits to just be kidding to encourage his friend. He is delighted when Rouga wins his fight while reassuring himself that he and Kyoya are friends. But to his surprise after the fight Rouga asks him to cancel the plan and tells him about not calling Kyoya on the misplay he had done years ago. Kyoya admits that his misplay was intentional and he was just testing Rouga's potential as a pawn. He then decides that Rouga's utility is over and cruelly ends their "friendship" but allows Rouga to keep his memories, confident that his plan can no longer be stopped.

Before the final fight of the tournament he request Sofia to give away free Dark Core replicas to all the kids in the stadium. During the fight between Gao and Tasuku a monster from Darkness Dragon World suddenly appears, Tasuku believes that Disaster's alleged plan had been successful and prepares to destroy the monster, only to find out that his Disaster Force is rigged to be unable to harm Darkness Dragon World. At that point the Buddy Police arrives and accuses Kyoya of being responsible by that monster appearing, but Kyoya confidently announces about an upcoming invasion from Darkness Dragon World and the Gaen Cup's "true goal". Reveal Disaster Force to the world, claiming that its the only way to combat the invaders, and to recruit kids from all over the world to use Disaster Force.

Everyone except Gao's friends falls for Kyoya's lie again and he comes to be seen as a messiah, effectively gaining support from the entire world. Kyoya the allows the fight to resume and is angrily surprised when Tasuku betrays him. After Gao wins the fight, he offers him his friendship and a Dark Core, but Gao rejects them knowing that Kyoya has been lying the whole time and challenges him to a fight. Kyoya confidently accepts knowing that the whole world is siding with him and now everyone hates Gao. Then he reveals the truth about his plan: Using Disaster Force fuels the portals to Darkness Dragon World, and by tricking kids into using it, he will use the invaders to take over the world and rebuild it with him in charge.

Trivia

 * The organ music Kyoya plays is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach.