Jecht

Jecht (ジェクト) is a fictional character from the SquareSoft role-playing video game Final Fantasy X. He is best known as Tidus’s father, as well as for being a major blitzball star in his hometown of Zanarkand.

Jecht is tall, muscular, surly, and has a tendency to drink. Jecht has a powerful blitzball move called the “Sublimely Magnificent Jecht Shot Mark III,” in which he kicks the ball into one opponent, it rebounds, hits another opponent, rebounds again, and is then kicked into the goal by him.

Final Fantasy X
In actuality, Jecht is not from Zanarkand. Rather, he is from a magically-summoned replica of the city (Dream Zanarkand), created from the memories of those who lived in the original and maintained by Yu Yevon, the summoner who was the leader of Zanarkand a thousand years before the events of Final Fantasy X. At that time, there had been a war between Zanarkand and the city of Bevelle, a war which Zanarkand could not hope to win. As a result, Yu Yevon (then called only “Yevon”) sought to preserve his city’s memory, even if he could not save the original.

Thus, he had his city’s surviving people become fayth on nearby Mt. Gagazet, and he then used their memories of Zanarkand to create a new city in its image, far removed from the Spiran mainland and war. Additionally, he created a malevolent force that would terrorize Spira for a thousand years—a creature called “Sin”—by drawing on millions of pyreflies and coalescing them around his body. His intention was that Sin would serve to protect him and the fayth while he summoned Dream Zanarkand, and that it would also provide a means to destroy machina (machines) and prevent anyone on the mainland from discovering Dream Zanarkand. While Sin performed this function—and its instruction to attack any large settlements of people, in the further hopes that the populace of the mainland would be too preoccupied with Sin to consider journeying far out to sea—as instructed, Yevon, for his part, would become known as “Yu Yevon” (“the Curse of Yevon”) and lose his own humanity, becoming nothing more than a disembodied spirit that existed with only the desire to maintain Dream Zanarkand’s existence. As a consequence of all this, both Jecht, his son, Tidus, and their city are dreams of the fayth (as are the aeons that figure prominently into Final Fantasy X’s story), their city and a thousand year cycle of chaos having been created to preserve Yevon’s beloved city that he was unwilling to let go.

In the present, Jecht’s son, Tidus, claims that he hates his father for putting him and his mother through hard times, and because he was left under a lot of pressure to live up to Jecht’s fame. Whenever Jecht was around, Tidus’s mother didn’t pay her son any attention (so Tidus claims). Furthermore, Jecht constantly criticized his son and called him a “crybaby.” In actuality, Jecht loved Tidus with all his heart, but was unable to express it in a gentle way. What he desired most was to make his son strong and thought that his criticisms would do this. Tidus, however, took Jecht’s insults at face value, not seeing the intentions behind them, and grew to hate him. Jecht then disappeared one day while training out at sea, and it would be ten years before he was seen again in Dream Zanarkand, leaving Tidus with feelings of animosity toward his father.

It was during those ten years of absence that Jecht was in the mainland of Spira, having been taken there unintentionally by Sin after Jecht touched it while it was resting in the waters near Dream Zanarkand.

To the people of Spira, Jecht is known as “Sir Jecht,” a man who, along with Auron, accompanied Lord Braska (Yuna’s father) as guardians on his journey to defeat Sin. During the earlier parts of that journey, Jecht’s tendency to drink sometimes got him into trouble, most notably when on the Moonflow when he once thought that a shoopuf was a giant fiend and wounded it, forcing Braska to pay for the damage with all of his travel money. After this incident, however, Jecht gives up drinking for fear that his family would be ashamed of him.

Maturing over the course of his journey in much the same way that Tidus later would during Yuna’s pilgrimage, when Jecht, Auron and Braska arrived at Zanarkand, Jecht was the one who gave up his life to become Braska’s Final Aeon, and as the Final Aeon, he defeated Sin, but the “spiral of death” continued. He and Braska died, but as a consequence of being the Final Aeon, Yu Yevon’s spirit possessed him and transformed the aeon he had become into the new Sin, leaving Jecht’s soul trapped within the creature for ten years, unable to completely fight back against the powerful instincts Yu Yevon had instilled within Sin. The only times Jecht could operate of his own free will was for brief moments when he heard the Hymn of the Fayth.

Utilizing this weakness in Sin to briefly immobilize him, Tidus, Yuna and their companions confronted Jecht inside Sin and—with heavy hearts—fought and defeated him, Tidus finally making peace with his father. After Jecht’s spirit was finally laid to rest, Yuna and her guardians utilized her aeons to weaken the spirit of Yu Yevon, making him vulnerable for the first time in a thousand years. They then unleashed an assault on him directly, destroying him and ending Spira’s spiral of death.

In the Farplane, Tidus and Jecht slap hands, indicating that Tidus has forgiven his father.

Final Fantasy X-2
Jecht has a small voice cameo in the final battles of Final Fantasy X-2 along with Braska and Auron, during which time they give Yuna encouraging words and advice on where to strike. He also appears in a short flashback from the scholar Maechen.