I Have The Power of God and Card Games On My Side!
@millenniumfandom
Yugioh is Love, Yugioh is Life. No Antis, Haters, or Bigots Welcome. 18+ Only Please. Puzzleshipping is the main ship here. Sometimes Egyptology Posts.
Battle City is the length of School, DEATH-T, RPG and Duelist Kingdom combined! O_o
BTW, there is clearly a "lost chapter" in the RPG Arc. Wonder what kind of game it had...
- The manga was on the verge of cancellation after the conclusion of the School Arc due to the multi-chapter battle with Shadi that was unpopular with readers, and upon re-reading it Takahashi actually agreed with those readers because he had tried too hard to make things mysterious and instead made them "surreal and abstruse". Because the two-part card game battle earlier had gotten the best reader reception, Takahashi decided to save the manga by bringing Kaiba back and fleshing him out into a proper nemesis. Interestingly, his first idea was to have him as an arch foe challenging Yugi to different games, which actually got used in the Toei anime, but instead decided to go with the DEATH-T tournament idea, which had long been an idea in the back of his head for a potential series finale. Of course, since he was utilizing it with Kaiba now, the final game played would have to be another card battle.
- DEATH-T is Takahashi's favorite story arc in the manga. He enjoyed it so much that he actually planned on it being longer, but his editor made him shorten it so that it could reach the card battle faster, which Takahashi concedes in retrospect was the right choice since it kept the pace appropriately tight. He also notes that because he was using his original idea for a series finale now, he ended up thinking of the new potential finale which would end up sticking: Yugi having to face Yami Yugi in order to achieve full independence for himself. Because of this, Yugi and Yami Yugi's bond became the series' focal point going forward.
- Upon returning to one-off adventures after DEATH-T, Takahashi found himself running out of ideas and thus made the fateful decision to craft a long-term Myth Arc for the series to follow - no more loose mysterious ideas like with Shadi; he actually had to plan things out. Thus he decided on how many Millennium Items there were and who had them, the story behind their creation and purpose, how the monsters of the card game connected to them, and of course the overarching antagonist Yami Bakura. So from the RPG arc through the Duelist Kingdom, DDM, Battle City and Pharaoh's Memories arcs, the series finally had a consistent narrative.
- As far as the anime adaptations of his work are concerned, Takahashi prefers Megumi Ogata as Yami Yugi, and Shunsuke Kazama as regular Yugi. And fair enough - though on paper, Megumi Ogata should have been perfect for regular Yugi as well; I don't know what the Hell the Toei voice directors were thinking in having her give the annoying high-pitched vocal performance she did for him. Takahashi also thought up a pitch for a crossover between Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX where the main characters would team up to face Sartorius, though it sadly never came to pass. A shame since it sounds awesome.
- He conceded that most of the fathers in the series were garbage, and said looking back on it, it was something of a commentary on toxic masculinity: the expectation to adhere tightly to their gender role, particularly where their sons were concerned, wore all these fathers down, and the focus then was on the sons to not fall prey to the same mistakes. Tellingly, open emotion and bonds of friendship were the key to this. Takahashi also flipped the script on the mother figure, noting that the male symbol ♂ is a man holding a spear to go fight while the female symbol ♀ is a woman with a cross praying for his safe return, yet his story's ultimate mother figure, Horakthy, is instead the one who obliterates the Big Bad once called forth by the power of friendship. Honestly, Takahashi is one of the most feminist writers in shonen!
- He talked about the full backstory of both Pegasus and Kaiba, with the most interesting parts respectively being that he personally believed that between his talk with Yami Yugi and his death that Pegasus repented of his sins and got to join his wife in Heaven, and that Gozaburo noticed Kaiba cheating at chess against him and that was in fact why he adopted him and Mokuba...someone willing to do something that brazen was worthy of being his heir.
- Dark Magician Girl was originally sketched as a beautiful woman, but he felt that this didn't reflect her being Dark Magician's pupil enough so he changed her into a cute teenage girl.
- One of the underlying themes of Battle City is how religion, which should be a force for good, is often a force for bad in the world as it leads to people fighting over their personal vision of God. Thus a story where characters are fighting over the God cards, with Yami Yugi, Kaiba and Marik trying to prove their respective God's superiority and defeat the others.
- Takahashi shares a heart-wrenching anecdote about his childhood, where he lost a friend by stealing a block from him and his big brother then being too scared to confess and return it. His guilt over it lasted until adulthood, and drawing Jonouchi returning the piece of Yugi's puzzle that he stole in the first chapter was his way of achieving some sense of emotional closure on the matter. All things considered, I'd say that he more than redeemed himself.
- Originally, Takahashi considered ending the final chapter with a flashback to the duel between Yami Yugi and Jonouchi at the end of Battle City, with the implication that Jonouchi won and the last panel being Yami Yugi smiling at his first true defeat, foreshadowing his later defeat at Yugi's hands. However, Takahashi conceded that although he began the story with Yugi and Jonouchi's bond front and center, it ended up being more about Yugi and Yami Yugi's bond, so he is glad he didn't do this ending and instead ended it with Yugi's internal monologue after saying goodbye to his other self, which feels like a more natural send-off.
- When embarking on the final arc, Takahashi decided to limit the card battles as he was understandably exhausted from Battle City, with more focus being on the monsters from said cards battling each other for real without any rules. He considered just having a long flashback to true history and then some sort of final confrontation with Zorc, but felt that would be way too long without Yugi and his friends doing anything, which led to the creation of the Memory World. This strengthened the conclusion since the key to defeating Zorc, who was trying to fully merge with the evil power within the Millennium Puzzle and resurrect himself, was for Yami Yugi to merge with the good he had found outside the Millennium Puzzle, the good that gradually vanquished the evil power's influence over him. Takahashi says that Yugi was destined to be the one to complete the Millennium Puzzle, since if anyone else had done so it would have been Zorc's soul that awakened and possessed them rather than the Pharaoh's. This accounts for why Yugi has the same hairstyle as the Pharaoh!
- Takahashi was drawing the Pharaoh and his priests facing Bakura in Kul Elna when he suffered a stomach ulcer that he had to go to the hospital for. Although discharged after three days, the recognition of his poor health made Takahashi worry about dying before finishing his story, which in turn made him give in to his editor's demand that he quicken the pace and reach the end of the series faster since reader interest had declined after Battle City wore them out. This caused him to change the story from his original plan. Originally, the Memory World would have stayed a projection of the past within the Millennium Puzzle and follow the true events of history. Akhenaden and Seto would get into a fierce fight over Kisara, with Akhenaden insisting she be tortured to free the Blue Eyes White Dragon, under the claim of so it can aid the Pharaoh, while Seto wants to protect her. Akhenaden would end up killing Kisara, then decide that with the White Dragon's power Seto should be king and thus head off to Kul Elna to forge the contract with Zorc, leaving Seto behind to grieve and remain susceptible to his Millennium Rod's corruption. From there we would have seen things we ended up not seeing: Bakura being sealed into the Millennium Ring, Shadah becoming Hasan, Akhenaden and Zorc having a different dynamic where Zorc's monster form is more akin to Akhenaden's ka rather than an individual opponent, Seto fighting against both the Pharaoh and Zorc while under the influence of darkness, and likely even a flashback to Atem's sacrificial death to seal himself and Zorc inside the Millennium Puzzle - a scene Takahashi imagined quite vividly and had even initially considered opening the whole arc on.
But instead, the Memory World is retconned to actually be a Shadow RPG board that the Millennium Puzzle is suspended above and projecting onto, which has a rule system that allows for events to go in a completely different direction from how they historically did rather than simply having a different ending affected by Yugi and his friends. Zorc the monster becomes an individual foe that Akhenaden separates from, which leads to events between him, Seto and Kisara changing drastically from the original plan and what was earlier glimpsed in the Battle City arc. While the arc still works on the whole, Takahashi admitted that he still has regrets over his decision, especially considering that in hindsight his fears over dying of illness proved to be wrong. Although he humorously notes that in his ill, hazy state of mind, he designed Zorc to look like...that, something he modified in these bankoban editions.
- Finally, he notes just like he did in the original final volume's afterwards that while Yu-Gi-Oh! is now a worldwide franchise centered around a card game and containing multiple manga and anime series, to him it will always just be the original manga that he made, always just be the story of a boy named Yugi and his friends. And that Yu-Gi-Oh!, IMO, will never be topped.
something really fun about Shadi going "as a tombkeeper I am loyal to the gods and pharaohs above all and to desecrate their graves and parade their corpses and relics around the world to be gawked at for profit is unforgivable blasphemy and I weep for it" at the same time Ishizu is going "as a tombkeeper I am loyal to the gods and pharaohs and so in order to save the world and orchestrate the future they have designed I will personally parade our relics around the world to be gawked at for profit, in fact I have made it my life's career and vocation to facilitate this."
Is it ever established how exactly Marik tracked down Yugi. Was it via the news of him beating Kaiba or winning Duelist Kingdom or do we assume he could Sense The Millennium Item Somehow or there was another Really Specific Prophecy.
The Ishtars got their items and started their ridiculous deadly family drama six years ago so it's really fun to picture Marik and Ishizu playing 5D mind chess via crime syndicate/egyptian government intrigue for all that time, all in desperate search of Atem, who is and will be for the next few years sitting in pieces at the bottom of Yugi's backpack during math class. It must have been really nice when the breakthrough finally happened, is all I am saying.
-Marik scrambled to learn Japanese in a year because he found out the pharaoh was in Japan and needed to be able gloat properly
-Marik had already learned Japanese because the popularity of duel monsters in Japan made it useful for the card game mafia
-Marik found out via crime spying that his sister was learning Japanese way ahead of time (since she of course knows where all this is going) and also starts learning Japanese because he correctly assumes it will be important. He won't understand why he's memorizing all these kanji for a few years yet but he does get really into Dragon Ball Z.
It's truly fucked up how ancient Ancient Egypt really is. Like, the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history ended in the 11th century BC, and that's the one they call the New Kingdom. King Tut's reign was one thousand years before the time of Cleopatra. The Great Pyramid of Giza was older to the Romans than the Romans are to us. Ancient Egypt is just fucked up old and it blows my mind every time I think about it.
It blew my mind when I found out that all three of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms were pre-Bronze Age Collapse. I had as implicitly assumed that at least the New Kingdom was post-Collapse.
hiiii local Egyptologist here coming in with a reminder that the Egyptians and/or the Mesopotamians (consensus flips every couple of years) developed writing c.3300 BCE. Which is *checks notes* about 700 years before they built the Pyramids (c.2600 BCE).
If we want to get to the start of Egypt's civilisation we have to go to c.6120 BCE. Roughly about 3000 years before the invention of writing and almost 4000 years before the Pyramids. This is called the Pre-Dynastic period and I encourage people to check out the Naqqada pottery because it's cool as shit.
Tutankhamun reigned c.1332 BCE which is 1300 years (1302 if we're being pedantic) before Cleopatra and 1300 years after the Pyramids were built. He's slap bang average.
The Bronze Age collapse happens *during* the New Kingdom as that period in Egypt's history doesn't end until c.1069 BCE and the BAC ends c.1150 BCE. Trust me, it had a punishing effect on Egypt with famine and tomb robbery being common.
Ancient Egypt was quite green. The idea that it was all a desert is that classic 'yellow filter' they use for foreign places in TV/Movies. They lived on the Nile. That big river that flooded once a year and left really beautifully fertile soil in its wake from which grew an abundance of life. It was GREEN. Yes there was desert, but nowhere near as much of it as people think there is.
So this vast amount of time should put a few things into perspective. Egypt's civilisation began in c.6120 BCE and ended with the death of Cleopatra in c.30 BCE. That's 6090 years. Yes. Six Thousand and Ninety.
So when we think of the Egyptians doing things and someone says 'the Egyptians did X' I'm going to ask you to ask yourself 'which time period of Egypt is that?' because SIX THOUSAND YEARS is a bit too long for one thing to be true for all of it.
Pharaohs had Pyramids? Really only the Old Kingdom (there are a couple of Middle Kingdom ones but they're shit)
Pharaohs had Chariots? Only in the New Kingdom (that's also when they got the horse...yes...up until the beginning of the New Kingdom, Egypt didn't have the horse)
Egyptians really liked cats? Not ever true. They had a trade of killing them to use as offerings to Bastet from the Late Period onwards (after the New Kingdom)
The Middle Kingdom? Pretty chill and has good literature.
Mummification? Really only took off for everyone in the New Kingdom
Pharaohs used the word Pharaoh? Only in the New Kingdom
Because Ancient Egypt was around for this long it really does the civilisation a disservice to reduce it to 'they always did this.' You wouldn't say any country in the world now is the same as it was 200 years ago or even 30 years ago for many of them. So lets not think that a civilisation that lasted nearly 6100 years was completely static. It would be beneficial to my mental health.
Anyway, Ancient Egypt is really fucking cool. Learn more about it please.
hey does anybody know what Bakura did with these particular dice in his collection after we killed Yami Bakura finally definitely permanently for sure in 1998. do we know where they are. like i don't wanna worry anyone or anything but i'm just asking did anyone check
I love Joey asking Yugi why he keeps losing and Yugi wanting to be helpful is like let me see/I can give you tip s but upon looking at it is like going through the 5 stages of grief
sex is fine but have you ever thought about all the ways you’d rewrite a flawed piece of media that shaped your life and holds a special place in your heart despite its unfulfilled potential
all this elaborate theorizing and analysis and I have still never come up with a more reasonable explanation for Yami Bakura's suicidally poor decision-making in Battle City than "he wants Marik so bad it made him stupid." occam's gayzor
So last night I had a dream that Yu-Gi-Oh was re-released as an even more Americanized version than the 4 kids dub. And the thing that sticks out the most is that one of the Millennium Items was...
✨The Millennium Pocket Watch✨
Tho why I remember it is probably because Mark (Marik) broke the fourth/dream(?) wall to gaslight me that ancient Egyptians ABSOLUTELY had pocket watches.
Mai Kujaku's entire ridiculous cheating strategy has been erased such that when I make jokes about her superhuman nose I get people who have no idea what I am talking about. This is how she keeps getting away with it. Some eleven year old somewhere is getting cheated out of their card game prize money right now because they can't tell the difference between Chanel and Maison Francis Kurkdijan and you're all just letting it happen
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