Yzak Jule

Yzak Joule (イザーク・ジュール) is a fictional character from the Japanese science fiction anime television series Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and its sequel Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny.

Personality & Character
Out of the four young pilots assigned to the Le Creuset Team of ZAFT, Yzak is the most loyal to the cause. He is portrayed as being competitive, hotheaded, and extremely impulsive. It is also seen that Yzak is highly competitive with Athrun Zala in terms of leadership. His best friend is Dearka Elsman. Yzak kept the scar to constantly remind him of the pain that the Strike has caused. On more than one occassion Yzak's temper has gotten the best of him, such as when he shot down a civilian shuttle believing it to be a unit of escaping soldiers. Throughout SEED, Yzak remains this way until the Battle of Panama, when Yzak truly sees the horrors of war. Once he forms the elite Joule Team under his aegis, he becomes more level-headed and much more of a leader. However, a meeting with Dearka (who had defected after JOSH-A), made Yzak see how twisted the ZAFT leadership was becoming. In Destiny, Yzak removes his scar and retains his level headed attitude, becoming more of a mentor to inexperienced pilots.

Skills & Abilities
In combat, Yzak is a top notch pilot in close combat, as he frequenly engages the Strike with merely the Duel's beam sabers. Although the Duel's subsequent upgrade with the Assault Shroud armor hindered his fighting style to more of a support role, at the end of the war he once again returns to using close combat. In Destiny, he retains his fighting style, choosing mobile suits with heavy firepower but incredible close combat capabilities, such as the ZGMF-1001/K Slash ZAKU Phantom and the close combat oriented ZGMF-2000 GOUF Ignited.

Gundam SEED
Yzak Joule is a second-generation Coordinator who graduated at the top of his class from the ZAFT military academy, granting him the right to wear the red uniform of an elite ZAFT pilot. Upon his graduation, Yzak was assigned to the prestigious ZAFT Le Creuset special operations team. His mother, Ezalia Joule, is a member of the PLANT Supreme Council, as were the parents of the other elite pilots in the Le Creuset team (except for Rusty Mackenzie, the ill-fated would-be pilot of the GAT-X105 Strike or the GAT-X303 Aegis). He and the Le Creuset team was assigned to infiltrate the Orb space colony Heliopolis to capture the Earth Alliance's new prototype mobile suits. Yzak managed to escape Heliopolis with the GAT-X102 Duel, and he became the Duel's permanent pilot after the destruction of the colony. Yzak, with the rest of the Le Creuset team, continued to harass the Archangel and Kira Yamato, pilot of the Strike. In Gundam SEED, Yzak is characterized by his zealous loyalty to ZAFT and his commanding officer Rau Le Creuset, not unlike the fanatatical devotion Anavel Gato had for the Principality of Zeon and Gihren Zabi in Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. Yzak is extremely proud of his elite status, and considers his teammate Athrun Zala his primary rival.

Vendetta against Kira
During one battle, Kira gave Yzak a scar across his face, which he chose to wear as a reminder of who gave it to him. However, it also drove him to murder, as witnessed in the next battle, the Battle of Orbit, when he mercilessly (and mistakenly) shot down a civilian shuttle while under the impression that there were retreating soldiers on board. This act had a traumatic effect on Kira because one of the passengers on board this shuttle was a little girl named Elle who gave him an origami flower as a token of her appreciation for his protection earlier.

At the end of the Battle of Orbit, Yzak enters Earth's atmosphere in the Duel and lands safely in Gibraltar. He is then assigned to North Africa, to join up with Andrew Waltfeld, the Desert Tiger. During a battle with the Archangel and Desert Dawn, Waltfeld insisted Yzak stay on top of the Lesseps, but he disobeys orders and leaves the Lesseps and tries to enter the battle.

When Nicol Amalfi is killed later on by Kira, Yzak shows his anger by cursing and beating Nicol's locker, asking why he had to die. He reminds his surviving teammates, Dearka Elsman and Athrun, that Kira also killed Miguel Aiman and gave him (Yzak) his scar. He and Athrun both vow to kill Kira the next time they meet, but Athrun comes much closer when he destroys the Strike with the Aegis.

Despite the tension between them in the past, Yzak shakes hands with Athrun as the latter is setting off to accept his promotion to the special forces. Although Yzak swears next time he'll be in charge, he tells Athrun not to get killed until then.

Yzak later battled Kira again when he appeared with the stolen ZGMF-X10A Freedom at the Battle of JOSH-A. Despite the fact that Yzak had killed Elle in cold blood, Kira refrained from killing him in return; instead, Kira damaged the Duel and told Yzak to retreat from JOSH-A, in order to save him from the Cyclops System. Yzak later participated in the Battle of Porta Panama, in which he fought the Earth Alliance's new GAT-01 Strike Dagger for the first time. However, once ZAFT triggered the Gungnir System rendering all the Strike Daggers paralyzed, Yzak did not participate any further because his opponents were defenseless. He also expressed his disgust at the glee exhibited by his ZAFT comrades while firing on the disabled mobile suits and executing surrendering Earth Alliance soldiers out of revenge for the Battle of JOSH-A. This probably was the start of his realization to the horror of the current ZAFT's fanaticism, even before he meets Dearka again, and showing that despite his arrogance and zeal, he is not without honor and valor.

Doubt
When the Earth Alliance later invades Orb in hopes of obtaining their mass driver, Yzak accompanies Le Creuset to observe. During the course of this event, Le Creuset comments that Yzak looks distressed and asks him if he wants to participate in the battle. Yzak says no, but Le Creuset adds that the Orb Union refused all offers of assistance from ZAFT and therefore they cannot intervene to which Yzak insists that he is not interested. He asks about the situation with Flay Allster, a former crew member of the Archangel whom Le Creuset abducted back at JOSH-A. Unbeknownst to him, Flay used to be lovers with Kira. In fact, she played a key role in the battle where Kira gave Yzak his scar by manipulating the former to fight as hard as he did. Although nothing happens between the two of them, Flay sneaks glances at Yzak every once in a while during her time with ZAFT and thinks about him as well as Kira and Le Creuset later on when Muruta Azrael declares his goal of eliminating all Coordinators at the Second Battle of Jachin Due.

Yzak is also perplexed after hearing about Lacus Clyne and Andrew Waltfeld defecting from the PLANTs because of the stern leadership of Patrick Zala to which Le Creuset asks, "What is it one should be fighting for?" - a question that Lacus had posed much earlier in his presence. Yzak is visibly moved by this question, yet he continues to faithfully serve ZAFT.

Yzak later found himself reunited with his old friend Dearka on the Mendel colony, where he initially accuses him of betraying the PLANTs. Dearka denied the accusation, saying he would never betray his own people; however, he also refused to fight in order to wipe out all the Naturals, a goal which Patrick Zala had openly confirmed earlier when confronted by his son Athrun, who had also defected from ZAFT. Dearka also told Yzak all about Kira, and explained that he was not really their enemy. Given the gravity of these revelations, Yzak had a hard time believing them and told Dearka that he was being deceived; in response, Dearka retorted, "which one of us is really being deceived?"

In the end, Yzak chose to aid the Three Ships Alliance during the Second Battle of Jachin Due after seeing the destructive capabilities of ZAFT's GENESIS weapon and realizing what Dearka said before about ZAFT could be true. When ZAFT prepares to fire GENESIS for the first time, Yzak tells Kira and Athrun to get out of its firing range. Later when Shani Andras attempted to kill Cagalli Yula Athha in her MBF-02 Strike Rouge, Yzak protected her with his Duel; then Dearka and Yzak in their respective mobile suits went on to destroy the GAT-X252 Forbidden with Shani inside. When the ZAFT superweapon GENESIS fired for the first time and annihilates half of the Earth Alliance fleet, Yzak retreated to a nearby ZAFT base. There, he has his first and only talk in the series with his mother. Later, when the GAT-X103 Buster was severely damaged by the ZGMF-X13A Providence's DRAGOONs, Yzak rushed in to save Dearka, only for both pilots to be attacked by an insane Clotho Buer, the last of the three Extendeds and the pilot of the GAT-X370 Raider; Yzak took the Buster's cannon and used it to destroy the Raider, killing Clotho in the process. (In Gundam SEED: Special Edition, however, Dearka killed Clotho instead of Yzak; this is currently the scenario that is considered canon.) He then brought Dearka back to the Archangel.

Near the end of the Bloody Valentine War, Yzak was promoted and given command of his own special forces unit; after the war, Yzak served in his mother's place as a temporary member of the PLANT Supreme Council. Following this, he was promoted to white uniform status and reformed the Joule team; joining him were his former comrade and friend Dearka Elsman as well as Shiho Hahnenfuss, a highly intelligent test pilot (who Yzak military nickname "Balsam") and fellow red uniform that Yzak had befriended earlier on in the war. These two characters appear to be the senior officers of the Joule team. Shiho obviously has some sort of romantic feelings for Yzak, however, he does not seem to notice them or simply doesn't return them.

Gundam SEED Destiny
Before the Second Bloody Valentine War began, Yzak, Dearka, and other ZAFT "war criminals" from the First Bloody Valentine War were put on trial. Yzak should have been executed for his actions during the Battle of Orbit (he himself says so later on when Athrun Zala returns to the PLANTs); however, thanks to PLANT Supreme Council Chairman Gilbert Durandal's defending speech, he continued to serve as a commander. The Joule team was involved in the unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Junius Seven colony drop, as well as the pursuit of the next-generation Gundams stolen from ZAFT, during which many of his subordinates were killed. During this battle, however, Yzak shows he is still an effective soldier, albeit more level-headed. Rather than kill Auel Neider and Sting Oakley as he surely would have done during the first war, Yzak simply holds them off by damaging their mobile suits just as Kira Yamato did to him during Operation Spitbreak.

Later when Athrun pays a visit to the PLANTs shortly after the Second Bloody Valentine War began, Yzak and Dearka are called from the frontlines to provide escort service. The three of them pay tribute to their fallen comrades from the first war - Nicol Amalfi, Rusty Mackenzie, and Miguel Aiman. Then Yzak asks Athrun to return to ZAFT and promises to help arrange things.

As a commander, Yzak was initially assigned a blue-colored ZGMF-1001 ZAKU Phantom, which he had outfitted with the optional Slash armament pack (fitting his hand-to-hand combat style); later, he switched to a white-colored ZGMF-2000 GOUF Ignited. He also had command of the Nazca-class destroyers Voltaire and Rousseau. In addition, he had his scar removed after the first war, presumably symbolizing the end of his grudge against Kira. Later during the Second Bloody Valentine War, he led the attack on one of the Requiem relay stations during the attempted firing of the weapon on Aprilus One.

It should be noted that Yzak did not immediately side with the Clyne Faction; at first, he went after Athrun, once again feeling his leadership position threatened. Dearka intervened, however, and convinced him to focus on the battle. As the Archangel and Eternal entered battle with the Messiah, Yzak ordered his forces to protect the Eternal from the Earth Alliance Forces, under the logic that he would be protecting a ZAFT ship. When he accompanied Lacus to meet with Kira in the special edition he is seen smiling with Dearka, Shiho Hahnenfuss, Athrun and Meyrin as Kira and Lacus hugged each other while the rest of the audience was surprised. He was last seen escorting Lacus Clyne into the PLANT Supreme Council chamber in Gundam SEED Destiny "Final Plus".