KaibaBros

Don't mind me, just me screaming about how much I adore the Kaiba brothers, now that I've watched the show for the first time in Japanese and I found out how amazing their writing was in the original. Not that I dislike having grown up with a dub based on the 4Kids version, but at the end of the day, holy DAMN, These writers loved the Kaiba brothers!

[kaibabrothersmadness]

One of my favourite things about the Duel Monsters anime's portrayal of the Kaiba Brothers is how well the writers executed the contradicting nature of Seto being Mokuba's role model despite Mokuba being the morally-sound one Seto heavily relies on to balance out his attitude so the life they've built for themselves doesn't implode on them again

(season 3 in Japanese sure did not hold back on nonstop providing the puzzle pieces for that "background" world-building and character explorations)

Seto is Mokuba's role model all the way in terms of determination and unabashedly being yourself, even if the world is against you for it:

But it's hysterical to me that with, like, 90% of the ways Seto actively GOES ABOUT these things, Mokuba's like:

This is such a hilariously consistent thing between these two. BOTH of them are written to be aware of that and that's what makes it work lol

Seto KNOWS that Mokuba needs to work backwards with the attitude he's being exposed to on a daily, but he's not too worried about it because he also knows Mokuba has long figured out for himself that he doesn't wanna act like that™ while still seeing his big brother for the hardworking, determined, and authentic person (with a deep down [and ngl, sometimes DEEP DOWN] heart of gold™) he is. For the better and the worse.

And what's best about this is that this is an unspoken mutual agreement. They never talked about this, it just happened naturally while growing up lol which keeps them in this low-key hilarious status quo of Seto trying to be an example for Mokuba on how to stand your ground in life by more-often-than-not utilizing jerkish methods towards everyone else,

And Mokuba then thinking to himself "Nah Bro, I'm not gonna do ✨️that✨️, but I WILL take note of your good intentions, though 👍"

Which, in turn, means that Seto is, in fact, 100% succeeding at teaching Mokuba to stand his ground on being determined and unabashedly himself. Seto's merely doing so by serving as a well-intentioned negative example that Mokuba doesn't want to emulate in anything but grit lol

[lysimachias]

In my mind palace this is 100% their post-canon friendship

For @seekerbr who requested Anzu or Kaiba, but...I couldn't decide, so you get both (◌˘◡˘◌)

[kaibabrothersmadness]

Mokuba, the very next door:

[ennunanaiurov]

I am, once again, in my Yu-Gi-Oh phase. Then again, when am I not.

[kaibabrothersmadness]

Here, have a Kaiba Brother's Vine Compilation (feat Joey/ Jounouchi) cause I'm a weak bitch and why not, I guess?

[1nstant-deactivated20141030]

[dreamspacewanderer]

At the end of the day, who really are you if everything you know about yourself stems from the life of a person you're pretending to live as?

[stephanilli]

My first speedpaint ever! I figured I’d stick with a familiar character since I’m still learning, so have a Yugi ;)

time spent: 3 hours

[omurizer-draws-things]

You found my weakness. Yes, Yami + ghost pokemon is my favourite thing ever

[rocketbirdie]

[UNINTELLIGIBLE]

(second pass at one of my favorite pieces from last year)

[frigginthiefshipping]

The Best Of Yugioh Hong Kong Subs

[kaibabrothersmadness]

The way I made this blog because I wanted to casually scream about how amazing the Japanese writers did back then with the Kaiba Brothers, but now while writing the analysis posts I realise that the writing was, in fact, so phenomenal in its ability to craft a complex and ever-deepening coherent big picture of their dynamic, development, and circumstances through seemingly "simple" scenes

that I'm continuously stuck with writing mini essays or in the case of the exploration of the Brothers' dynamic and past in Noa's Virtual Arc, I'm straight up working on a seemingly three-or-four-parter.

Send help. I'm having the time of my life, but still. Send help. I would love to actually be able to finish and POST my analyses, too lol

[laquilasse]

Post Battle City sleepy snoozer bros <3

[kaibabrothersmadness]

I'm a firm believer of the vision that by the age of 15, Kaiba Mokuba will be unofficially known in the business world as the second wielder of the Blue Eyes White Dragon.

Not because he started playing Duel Monsters, but because when some powerful businessmen become unprofessionally threatening and try messing with him he's got Seto on speed-dial and that dude is just waiting to get Mokuba's legally-secured "Go" to wreck a bitch.

[nenya85]

My poor baby… locking up afterwards doesn’t make up for breaking in in the first place.

I think that the Kaiba brothers’ grasp of the law goes something like this:

LEGAL: Stuff you can do, no problem.

ILLEGAL: Stuff that takes a little more time, money and effort to get done.

And when it comes to Seto Kaiba, that applies to the laws of time and space as well as man-made ones.

[ovegakart]

Tristan and Téa somehow always get stuck on the outside of these things

< previous chapter

First chapter

[kaibabrothersmadness]

One thing about Kaiba Seto I'm still perplexed about the Yugioh anime never having explored more of despite it constantly being relevant to his characterization towards the Gang, is that back in the orphanage, 10-year-old Seto had to quickly learn to view his same-aged peers as threats because some of said other orphans thought it was funny to take their frustrations and feelings of being powerless and abandoned out on 5-year-old Mokuba who already was drowning in depression after their parents died and their other relatives ditched them:

That is such a crucial detail about Seto and the way he had to learn to view his peers. As threats he has to be ready to fight because all of them could suddenly prove themselves to be a danger to him and especially Mokuba.

So his instincts tell him he can't let anyone in and befriend them, even if they are kind, helpful, and friends with Mokuba right now. 'Cause what if he let's his guard down and becomes friends with them, too, and THEN they show their true colours because they needed him to stop being cautious first? And Seto knows exactly that if the Gang were to attack one of them, it wouldn't be Seto. It would be 5-years-younger Mokuba first, whose trust they've gained by now, because he himself has been keeping himself so safe and inapproachable to everyone around him that the Gang knows that the best way to hurt him is hurting Mokuba. And at thing point, they would KNOW how to hurt them best.

So he can't stop being cautious. And especially not if the Gang are the first people in so many years that Seto would even start daring to hope for that making friends might be a safe thing to do again.

Seriously, how tf did this never come up to be given any kind of development? The show had the Gang not exactly rarely question why Seto is still so hostile and not letting his guard down around them and why they even bother. But the show also had very little interest in giving Seto actual development for that flaw, or even just EXPLORE what his problem with them still is.

Which is really weird considering how much this show LOVED Seto. So one would think exploring WHY we were in this eternal stalemate between Seto and the Gang would have at some point been declared a priority over, for example, completely inconsequentially inventing Siegfried into Seto's backstory as some weird peer he met like ONCE, but nothing really happened there, so it also did pretty much nothing for Seto's character (if I'm wrong about this, feel free to enlighten me)

Cause in comparison to that, the information that Seto protected Mokuba from bullies Seto's age in the orphanage is one we got in season 1. So it's not like this is backstory they only added in later on and couldn't do much more with because of it. They could have explored Seto's hostility towards making friends the ENTIRE time from s2 onwards. They just didn't do it and I find that baffling to this day.

[romanceddawn]

absolutely obsessed with the way mokuba's voice and face changes when he talks to his brother and the way seto immediately caves to him

[familyagrestefanblog]

I know this is an old post, but I finally got around to this episode on my second rewatch of Yugioh in Japanese and I just gotta scream about how much I adore this moment

I know 4Kids apparently hated Mokuba back in the day, but in the original, Mokuba is one of the most important characters narrative and structure wise and pretty much consistently gets well-written and purposeful characterization that's crucial to the plot and the Kaiba' half of the big picture. Even if it is at times more on the subtle side, pretty much no moment with this boy is wasted (which you sure as hell can't say about some of the other core cast members)

And this moment is one of my absolute favourites. It does so much in such little time.

1. Establishing for good that Mokuba has 3 different voices - His regular voice, his vice president voice, and his little brother voice - and that Mokuba makes active choices when to talk in which voice to get the result he wants.

2. The show is, in my opinion, never holding back on this truth, but I wanna state it here: when he's grown up, Mokuba is absolutely gonna out-businessman Seto. They already run the Kaiba Corporation together with Mokuba being even younger than Seto when he started and yet already in charge of Tournaments, talking people (especially Dualists) into working with them, how to improve their public Image, and even medical emergencies. All fields that fundamentally require a high level of emotional and strategic intelligence and Seto is at all times in this show (from beginning to end) characterized to have 100% trust in Mokuba handling these roles as competently as Seto his' (and thats not even mentioning every other business-related field Mokuba is on-screen shown to be competent and trusted in).

And this moment right here further established HOW Mokuba operates so efficiently as Vice President. Including getting SETO to do what he wants, but doing it in a transparent way that doesn't insult or undermine his big brother.

Cause by all means, on the surface level, Mokuba here is not voicing a logical argument. Of course HE - Kaiba Mokuba, Kaiba Corporation's Vice President and Battle City Commissioner - doesn't fucking need an earned duelist ID card to enter that Battle Ship. He's literally one of the two people whose presence and privileges over everyone else is a given even if he weren't in any special role and just there to watch his brother duel.

Only that this is not an illogical and naive argument in the way Mokuba means it.

What he does is as Vice President sternly questioning why their employees are acting like the Gang (who is close to the Kaiba Brothers and helped and saved them and the Corporation at several occasions) doesn't have special privileges like HIM - not him and Seto, Mokuba is talking for himself and doesn't push Seto's boundaries - in their own rights, something the employees nervously want to question further because SETO constantly goes on about how he doesn't even like these "inferior" people.

So for the employees, both of their equal bosses' (which the Kaiba Brothers are, they are addressed, spoken to, and obeyed with the same level of respect) interests are clashing.

Mokuba says the Gang has upmost special privileges as their trusted friends while Seto always says that they are beneath him and doesn't want them around.

Of course the employees are confused, nervous and wanna question if Mokuba is sure about this because they know that Mokuba will normally not challenge Seto's decisions and personal preferences like that. Especially not in public and in a business related situation.

So Mokuba, like the brilliant cookie he is, turns around to Seto and says with his little brother voice "Right, Nii-sama? :D". Because Mokuba knows that, first of all, Seto absolutely tends to cave at whatever his little brother wants, and second of all, Seto doesn't ever (intentionally) undermine him as Vice President (Seto honestly just 100% believes that he and Mokuba are always on same wavelength due to Mokuba carrying their dynamic's emotional stability, so he sometimes doesn't communicate important information or intentions on HIS side bc he assumes Mokuba already has (or will have) him figured out) and doesn't tolerate Mokuba being undermined in his position by others either.

And THAT is what makes this moment so brilliant for me. Mokuba was written to approach it this way because it ensures Seto that he (Mokuba as Vice President) may be challenging Seto's status quo about how the Gang is treated within their company, but the two of them are still THE team and Seto gets to have the last word and set new boundaries to reestablish his comfort around the gang and not have his his authority as President questioned or undermined in front of everyone.

This moment is so unbelievably good. It's A+ characterization for Mokuba and brilliantly showcases how he develops and operates as Vice President and even challenges Seto's established orders, but does so in a way that makes his intentions and methods transparent to his big brother so Seto is comfortable in letting this change happen because Mokuba ensured that Seto knows that he's still 100% on Seto's side, so no need to lash out in fear or insecurity. Things just needed to start to change and Mokuba will help him do that.

And can I just emphasise once more how much I love how blatantly transparent Mokuba is here in his method to get his way? The way Mokuba talks to the employees in his serious Vice President voice and then turns around to Seto to ask for his okay in a cute little brother voice?

Because the show DOES characterize Mokuba to be VERY good at getting people to do what he wants. Most prominently shown in the Grand Prix arc in season 5 where Mokuba tells Seto to leave convincing the Gang to join the tournament to him, followed up by Mokuba being explicitly written to strategically withhold information in his conversations with the Gang so they can't tell him "No" and only give them said information bit by bit (or not at all because he still needs them clueless to blindside them with something later)

Information including Yugi not being meant to actually participate in the tournament, but being the opponent of the duelist who won against everyone else (meaning it was MOKUBA'S idea to take advantage of Yugi's titel as King of Games to draw a massive amount of public interest)

AND not giving awkward and shy Yugi a heads up about being asked to step in front of the crowd and say some words as King of Games and the Tournament's honoured "End Boss" because again, letting Yugi know would have risked Yugi saying "No" and that's not something the Kaiba Corporation could afford in that moment (don't worry, Mokuba quickly catched on and saved Yugi from being publicly embarrassed because Mokuba is an A+ host, too).

(Let's also quickly acknowledge for a sec that Mokuba just casually used Seto's most bitter rival to the Kaiba Corporation's benefit like it's a regular Tuesday. That kid is scarily competent as business man holy damn lol Mokuba, you can't DO THAT to people omfg xD)

With my point being that this moment right here in Battle City depicts Mokuba as being unwilling to pull any of these manipulation methods on Seto. With Seto, Mokuba is blatantly transparent about his methods' intentions so Seto can be in on it, even it it means that Mokuba's method itself looks more childish and illogical to an outsider. Mokuba doesn't care because for him, him and Seto being a team is more important and Seto shouldn't have to fear that his little brother is going to take advantage of the ocean-deep soft spot he has for him to get his way within the company's hierarchy or for anyone else's sake on Seto's expense.

Catch me crying that this is happening a couple of episodes before the Virtual Arc 🫠