I'm very pleased Giovanni won. I'll be silent for most of the rest of the pre-liminary rounds; it's anyone's ball-game now, it seems.
@.access:
The most GAR in Baccano! is out already (Isaac) :/ shame.
Stupid and charismatic =/= not Gar. Kamina isn't Gar, he's a loud idiot. Ladd, Firo and Szilard Quates are the manliest folk in that show.
@.access:
GAR is like a group of traits of personality that makes the character be almost that japanese caricature of "man". You know? Follow the path of a man, see the value of your enemy and aknowledge him as an equal, fight headon with all your might without relying in dirty plans or minions, pay respect to the fallen warriors and have a cape… and evertyhing like that. Dio was NOT this.
Gar is much simpler than that; it has two components, a "value" and "magnetism". The value is what one hold, i.e. an idea of what traits one considers to constitute what a true man should exemplify, and the "magnetism" is the concentration/charisma of those qualities in a character.
Your idea of Gar seems to constitute "knight errant" type folk.
@.access:
As must as we hate how overrated TTGL is, I have to admit that Kamina is EXACTLY what GAR is (except that episode in Rossiu's village where he was trying to destroy the creed of the people just because he couldn't agree with them). And, staying in TTGL, Leeron was much more GAR than Viral.
Leeron and Viral aren't really manly, but Kamina is barely above them. He's not even Gar, let alone an invincible mass of manliness that people make him out to be.
What was Kamina? A loud, stubborn and selfish jerk. He wasn't very smart and was secretly a coward, but acted like a doofus because he figured Simon would bail him out, since those antics would get Simon motivated. That's it; there's no core internal ideals, there's no genuine motivation, it's all tools from a bag of tricks Kamina pulls to keep his Tom Sawyer by-the-seat-of-one's-pants lifestyle afloat without getting killed.
The only time he ever did anything manly was, out of duty to his brother, he stood up when he was dying and killed Thymilph, with help from Simon. It's the one time he went beyond his cowardly facade - sadly, one incident does not trump a life-time of achievements other characters have.