ネリネのささやき

sideblog for general thoughts and commentary on series I poke at. watch out for untagged spoilers. for a list of tags, click here.

[nerinewhispers]

huh, i guess we're going with a twilight of hometown vibe for chapter 5. that's fun! cool to see things come full circle like this, considering the remake tweaked that chapter a little as a nod to undertale. hopefully this one's a little less rough to stay fully pacifist (or fully violent, i guess...) in than what it's referencing, though.

[ballgame]

Woah!

[nerinewhispers]

all my complaints about the pacing and the amount of plot bits that get zero chance to breathe aside, i do really like how blatantly duel masters SX follows up on the underlying themes that started in the later half of part 1 and then got increasing amounts of focus in FE. there's this constant undercurrent of self-centeredness and dehumanization of others in the name of benefitting yourself and yours leading to (often bloody) tragedy, especially when it's those in positions of power acting that way, but SX specifically really gives up all pretense of it being just an "underlying" theme and drags it to the forefront with all the subtlety of a drilling rig until it's more text than subtext.

granted, it's still a series targeted at a very young audience, so some of it still remains dressed up in metaphors until the very end and there's a much stronger focus on understanding and forgiveness than you usually get from works with the same themes aimed at an older audience, but it's remarkable how much louder this series is about its (frankly pretty heavy) message than a lot of its older-aimed peers from the same general era. it's... nice, especially when it's a message that's unfortunately still very much relevant in the present day.

[kogameh]

REAPER UNDER THE MOONLIGHT

(cloak-less ver under the cut!)

I surprisingly got the pose down pretty fast despite struggling with it at first...only for it to get covered by the cloak so I had to make this ver lmao (you can see his pants shimmer better too!)

[nerinewhispers]

finished duel masters SX! i still liked it a fair amount, but the more i dwell on it, the more i feel like it's kind of a step down from FE, and the main reason for this ends up coming down to... well, the pacing, i think.

can't really get into the finer details without delving into spoilers this time around, so spoiler warning for the entirety of the shoubu-era duel masters manga ahead!

------

of the three parts of the series, i feel like FE has easily the best pacing. it feels like a well-structured scenic rollercoaster - it gets intense quite a few times, and the final stretch especially is pretty breakneck, but it always eases you into each new arc, and almost always gives you at least a little bit of time to let the heavier moments sink in (with only the finale kinda breaking from that pattern; understandably so, given the situation there escalates in tandem with its heaviest moments).

SX, in contrast, is a full-on thrill ride. you have the first volume to sort of ease you into this new part of the series, but from volume 2 onward, you're just speeding right ahead as things keep escalating and escalating and escalating and escalating. every single time the plot moves forward things get more and more serious and the stakes climb higher and higher until you end up with the finale dealing with averting a very literal apocalypse day in a conflict between the last person standing on both the protagonists' and the antagonists' side of the story.

this, um... causes some issues. namely through the fact that nothing that happens throughout SX really gets a chance to breathe.

every single time some kind of major reveal occurs, it gets barely any time to sink in before the next escalation happens. every single time a character dies (both seemingly and, the further you get, increasingly for real), you get less and less time to really process what just happened before you're sent hurtling towards even higher stakes. this works great for building up dread as things get worse and worse, but it hurts so, so, so many moments throughout the story it eventually starts to feel more like the series is just trying to shock you over and over to keep you reading. FE still had a few decent stopping points despite being pretty high-stakes; SX has almost none, as you're constantly haunted either by harsh cliffhangers or things just being incredibly dire in general.

which feels unfortunate, because SX does a lot of things that could've hit so much harder with a little more time to linger on them, or just any actual on-screen elaboration! there's no shortage of good ideas and plot beats, it's just genuinely all so bizarrely handled!

just to ramble a bit about a few things that come to mind:

garde as a group finally gets humanized more, but beyond a few comments from oasis during their last stand to let ash get away, it's really only zakira and ash who get any actual narrative attention. were you hoping for anything regarding rich and shizuka following their revival given how they died early into FE, something for the lower-rank members that got nearly no focus in the original manga, or any elaboration on what yesman's deal is? sorry, no time for that!

hakuoh turns out to have lingering dissociative issues (if not outright DID or OSDD-2) from his time as white, with at least one instance of amnesia when said dissociative issues are triggered by a trauma reminder. do we get to devote any time to exploring this? nope! the most you get is that his demeanor when he's particularly worked up remains more in line with white than how he was earlier in the series!

the whiteout technique gets at least some attention devoted to the consequences it ends up having, but that still gets cut short pretty fast due to the focus shifting to shoubu's situation (and then hakuoh gets written out of the plot so we can have shoubu be the protagonist tackling the final parts of the story alone). there's the brief implication that his behavior all the way back in the temple arc was likely an attempt to reach a similar state without the physical consequences, but likewise, no time to explore that.

...honestly, hakuoh in general kind of gets shafted pretty badly the longer SX goes on. FE established that he's meant to be co-protagonists with shoubu, and you can feel that in the first two volumes, but the further you get into SX, the more he gets the same treatment as the rest of the party: gets to put up a fight for a while but ultimately gets written out of the plot so shoubu can tackle the finale alone. this would be annoying but somewhat understandable if it was just the main story, but then the epilogue gets weird about him too and doesn't even let us see how he reacts to shoubu's confirmed survival, unlike shouri and rekuta? despite showing he was by far the most torn up about losing his friend, even with him being in (rightful) denial of his death? c'mon now.

really, the entire reunion with shoubu should've been onscreened properly. we don't even get to see anyone but rekuta react to hearing him on the phone, let alone getting to meet him again at the tournament - the one illustration we get places the focus on shoubu waving to adam, with no particular reaction from the others, as if they already got their reunion out of the way beforehand. it completely craters the emotional weight of what should have been the most impactful part of the epilogue, and it feels especially weird after how FE handled both the temporary reunion with hakuoh and its actual finale.

speaking of shouri, you could see him alive back in FE's finale if you were keeping an eye out for him, but SX just brings him in again without actually covering how he's alive. i know there's a chapter in one of the 大長編 volumes dealing with this, but that really should've been included in the main story! same thing with actually having the characters react to his survival! hakuoh especially, considering how he handled sarutobi's mimickry of shouri!

SX once again, like FE briefly, sort of goes wink-wink-nudge-nudge at the idea that the master from the temple arc is likely zeus and also quite possibly hakuoh's (estranged?) father. does it actually confirm this? nope. do we get any space to actually explore these hints before things go to hell again after the flashback that brings it up? also nope.

amachi gets fleshed out a bit more with his ability to intuit people's playstyles and an actual chance to duel on-screen now that he's in the main cast (instead of a joke-y side character), plus a little more elaboration on his family, but in spite of this it... feels like the story barely actually does anything with him? his duel with sadness is all over the place, and after that part he gets almost nothing until he gets unceremoniously killed in a duel by passion. i know he also gets an extra 大長編 chapter, but like with shouri - should've been part of the main story. this kid needed more time to just exist given he got added to the main cast for SX, and he just... doesn't get that time.

george has kind of just ceased to exist. he gets a brief cameo when the party calls doctor root about adam where his design has reverted back to his animal onesie look, and... i think that's genuinely it? i think he's not even in the finale sequence showing nearly every other duelist shoubu met before. did... did mr. matsumoto not know what to do with him now that george aged out of his "baby that acts like a scary old man" gimmick and got an actual backstory?

speaking of characters he didn't seem sure what to do with: bucketsman's identity gets retconned for the second time in the series and as has been the pattern - zero time for anyone in the actual main cast to react to that reveal, and bar them spearheading the search for shoubu, it ends up as a total background detail immediately. it would've been nice to at least get yuu to chime in here, considering they're still shown to be in a relationship and that reveal implies really confusing things about what age range bucketsman is supposed to be.

kettleman got revived somewhere in the finale. this gets absolutely zero acknowledgment by anyone beyond the fact he's at the funeral with teapotman. surely the guy who got straight up incinerated being among those revived should've gotten at least a little bit of focus...?

sadness had a "salvation notebook" with a list of names of people that were expected to survive. i was expecting this to turn out to be a retroactive explanation for garde's naming system, but nope, it just never comes up again...?

genuinely: what the fuck is x's deal? no, not the real one (although it'd be nice to learn literally anything about her, too), the weird parasite skinwalker. what is she? how and why did she end up wanting to bring back adam (and seemingly specifically wanted to steer him toward finishing the job he started in the past, at that)? is she an alien? is that why the entire anatagonist faction has such a heavy alien motif and why garde has so much alien tech following zakira's takeover and cooperation with her faction? so many questions, zero answers.

kokujou finally gets some non-cameo screentime again at the very end set after the big finale but before the epilogue, and it's focused on him and hakuoh after they got nothing together since the temple arc! it... also introduces a massive retcon that there was a prior iteration of the temple with a different set of devas that kokujou was a part of until he betrayed them (implicitly with his usual duel violence) and set the place on fire? can we maybe get an actual flashback to this and not just three not-directly-connected panels with hakuoh narration? no? we're just going to let this whole retcon hang in the air with no further elaboration on it? huh?

there's probably more stuff i could name if i think about it longer (adam's flashback and how little time they get to simmer because of when they happen and how quickly he snowballs from there feels like a borderline case, for example), but you get the idea. it all results in a story that feels like it's constantly rushing, unable to give the ideas that come up during it the time they need to really achieve their full emotional weight, or shortchanging characters because it just can't spare the time (enough, or at all) for them.

i feel like this sounds extremely negative, but i have to repeat here - i did like SX a fair amount! there's still a lot to love, and more than a few moments that hit me pretty hard (and one specific plot beat that genuinely shocked me). i like adam, i found his bodyguard squad (x doesn't count) pretty endearing, i enjoyed most of the duels, it was great to see zakira get some actual character development, and the big moments that did get at least a bit of time to breathe are all pretty strong.

just... after FE felt like a genuinely polished story, it stings to go back to what's supposed to be the grand finale of this era of the series feeling like it needed a second take to iron it out like the first part did, especially knowing that it just never got that kind of second take like part 1 did with the original anime and charge. it's so, so close to something stellar, but in its attempts to rush to the climax it ends up stumbling repeatedly along the way.

at the very least, i reaaally think we should've gotten that on-screen reunion. like... c'mon. you put everyone through all of that and you don't even let your readers see the main part of their reunion after multiple years of assuming one of them was dead for good (or, in one case, being in denial but extremely torn-up about it)? please. i'm not asking for much here, mr. matsumoto. 🫠

[nerinewhispers]

it is genuinely impressive just how much the shoubu-era duel masters manga starts improving over time. the original manga slowly starts to find its footing around the temple arc, but it isn't really until the last few volumes that it starts to feel genuinely cohesive - there's a lot of spots where you can tell matsumoto was frequently coming up with ideas on the fly, and taken as a whole there's several plot beats and characters whose handling suffers from that. bucketsman and especially yuu feel like the prime examples here, with yuu's later characterization feeling dramatically different from early on to the point it's kind of jarring. that the original anime and especially charge were able to retrofix so much of it so well is frankly a feat.

FE, though? you can tell there was more of a plan going into this one. there's better foreshadowing, characterization is more consistent across the board, the story generally does a better job at saving the comedy moments for when they're more approriate, and there's a surprising willingness to tackle a few pretty serious things with an amount of grace you wouldn't expect from a corocoro series. which isn't to say it doesn't still have some issues here and there, but the sheer spike in quality is wild. even the art has some really impressive moments every now and then!

it really is a shame the series was so mismanaged in the west that it barely had a chance there (to say nothing of how the gag dub and its handling of what did make it over messed up the story). there's a genuine gem of a story here once it gets going, and i'd love it if more people could experience the ride for themselves.

[clannfearrunt]

Anyways. Baby Kokujou w pet dove. Baby

[nerinewhispers]

"did the author of this story intend for this plot element to have an uncomfortable undercurrent to it or did they just accidentally stumble into something that can read that way by piling on tropes without thinking the resulting combination through?" is one of those problems you run into every once in a while that you almost never get an actual answer to, especially when it's a work from before social media took off or the original creator is just generally reclusive. which can be... frustrating, depending on the subject matter in question, but in most cases you can usually err on the side of "they probably just didn't think through how this comes across carefully enough" and you'll probably be right.

but sometimes you run into a case where the rest of the work dips its feet into certain subjects juuust enough that the possibility of that undercurrent being intentional subtext feels... distressingly plausible. you'll still likely never know for sure, but the higher plausibility makes it feel distinctly more haunting, to say the least.

[nerinewhispers]

one thing that can be fun about checking out works of fiction in different languages is seeing how the differences in those languages sometimes lend themselves better to different story elements, even when we're talking about translations of the same tale. some languages have descriptors that simply don't have a good equivalent in another that work especially well for a particular scene, for example, while others have more distinct variations in speaking mannerisms that lend a stronger "voice" to the characters even when all you have to work with is the actual text (or, at most, limited visuals). some kinds of reveals can be easier to build up to in one language than another, too.

i think my personal favorite example of that will always be first-person pronouns in east asian languages, though. when you have a specific, per-character word that indicates the speaker's identity, you can use that single word - and changes to it - to convey so much at once in a way that's much more difficult to pull off in languages lacking that, especially if you don't necessarily want to draw too much attention to it. a rough and intimidating character slipping into a softer first-person pronoun when she's happier and with friends can work as a way to reinforce character growth, while slipping into an even rougher way of referring to herself can hint that it's an intentional way of being intimidating. an otherwise gentle, soft-spoken character using a more confident pronoun in spite of his attitude can be a clue that there's something bubbling under the surface without being too in-your-face about it. and a character suddenly using an entirely different first-person pronoun can subtly show it's actually an imposter taking their place... or that there's something very, very wrong with them.

details like that tend to be an absolute nightmare to handle in translations both ways; translating from a language that has those linguistic quirks into one that doesn't is often pretty difficult because you need to find another way to convey the same thing, but translating into languages like that also needs to be done with a lot of care to avoid muddling the original intent with too much (or too little) interpretation for the sake of those details. but when it's done well, you end up with works that shine in different ways in both their original language and their translations, and in tandem end up strengthening the work as a whole. it's rare, but it's always a treat when it does happen.

[nerinewhispers]

i tend to like seeing different stories tackle similar themes, or even just the same sorts of tropes. there's usually something fun about seeing how things vary in execution from writer to writer - even when there's overlap due to shared inspirations or intentional references to another work, one writer might find a better way to convey a topic than another, or comes up with a way to integrate a line of dialogue, ability, or even an entire plot occurrence that ends up being even more impactful than whatever work you've previously encountered them in. hell, not even necessarily different writers; seeing the same writer take another stab at ideas they had back when they were less experienced is a lot of fun, too.

sometimes, though, too much familiarity with how some plot beats tend to be handled just leads to an immediate sense of dread when you see them pop up in a new story. sure, it's not guaranteed to pan out similarly again, but that feeling of "oh no, i know where this tends to go" can still be just as impactful as seeing an actual spoiler, especially if it's a narrative device that tends to hit you pretty hard. that's still fun in its own ways, but it's definitely, uh... scarier to encounter, to say the least.

[nerinewhispers]

there's something almost kind of funny about passing up a work of fiction because its premise didn't catch your attention, only to eventually find out via contextless spoilers that apparently at some point the story escalates in absolutely wild ways. and sometimes, that little voice going "wait, how?" is enough for you to give that work of fiction a second look, just out of morbid curiosity.

and then, as you see the pieces for how things got from point A to point B slowly slide into place, you realize...

oh. this is going to hurt to sit through knowing where this trainwreck is going, huh.

[melongifts]

Hey anyone notice how google translate is being pretty liberal with their translations as of late? Takin some real liberties to infer tone.

[melongifts]

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

I'm just like... what is anyone who is translating what I'm thinking into their own language going to think when a translation app decides that it knows my intended tone? When online communication is already so complicated and nuanced? I'm a non-native so I'm spending ages agonizing over 117 characters, but when I'm chatting in English I'm not being so deliberate. How likely is it that tools that 'naturalize' are going to make choices that don't reflect reality and lead to insulting misunderstandings? I spoke with an English learner just yesterday who thought they were being bullied (they were not, the commenter in question was just excitedly infodumping about sociology) because something was lost in translation, and I wonder if it's because of tools making choices like this. I'm just a luddite I don't trust stuff like this. stinks of ai asking me if it can rerwrite my email in a more quirky style.

[melongifts]

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

I AM SO SICK OF DEFAULT AI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ballgame]

This dialogue reads pretty well as being about Kris' upbringing. It's not even a Doylist thing considering that this is their Dark World; they're projecting onto a fellow cage. The way the tone of this dialogue contrasts with the Goulden Sams we've met before is humorous, but that past dialogue now almost betrays a sense of callousness towards Kris when you consider that they originated from Card Kingdom, a Knight Dark World.

Then there's Suilver Sam.

This is probably about the Vessel. It's also a Backstreet Boys reference, but that's less important.

Would this be Doylist? Or does it indicate that Kris knows about the Vessel to some degree? Whose to say at this point in time. This former could paint a pretty interesting picture of the Vessel's mentality— especially considering this Suilver Sam isn't actually correct about being original—but both plant seeds for a future dynamic between Kris and the Vessel.

Actually, if you consider both Suilver Sam and the Thrash Machine as Vessel parallels, then a rather specific implication about Kris and the Vessel's future dynamic begins to form.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this.

Kressel aside, there are aspects of the "moral choice" that are worth pondering about if you choose to read it as oddball foreshadowing. For one, we're always the deciding factor, either we choose Love/Hate, or Hate automatically wins because we defeated too many enemies violently. Plus in the "HATE WINS" scenario it's always Goulden Sam knocking out Suilver Sam, never the other way around.

[nerinewhispers]

slightly tangential to that last reblog, i've been thinking about the "reincarnation" shenanigans in ygo a lot lately... though, well, i guess i kinda need to define what i actually mean there first, oops.

i like using "reincarnates" as a shorthand for all the present-day characters with ancient egypt-era counterparts, but if we're being technical, the only actual reincarnated individuals are probably siamun → sugoroku (since atem's spirit reacts to the latter as the former, and then later in the memory rpg he straight up mistakes simon for sugoroku) and priest set → seto (kaiba) (the millennium rod-induced past life memories are, uh, pretty unambiguous for that one). and potentially priest isis → ishizu, i guess, but isis has even less to work with than siamun so that one's less concrete.

with the other two - yugi and atem, ryou and (thief king) bakura - i've always seen it as less literal reincarnation (which it kinda can't be, what with atem's and bakura's souls still being around in their respective millennium items) and more two cases of "nature rolled the same general soul foundation again by chance." same starting point for their being, different direction for how they develop due to growing up in different locations with different circumstances, essentially.

i like viewing it that way because it provides a neat little explanation for their physical resemblance and the overlapping personality traits/interests they have while also doubling as a way to inform why they differ in the ways they do: same foundation, but shaped differently by their respective life circumstances. even neatly works as an explanation for why yugi and ryou specifically are compatible hosts for atem and bakura (though that's more notable in ryou's case since we know what the millennium ring does to people who aren't compatible).

the yugis are probably the easier pair to examine through that lens just by virtue of both of them getting a good amount of screentime. there's a few pretty clear traits they have in common, just to list a couple:

both like and excel at a wide variety of games (and both are quick learner when tackling new games)

both tend to be strongly into their interests compared to other things

oth care deeply for and are protective of those they're close to

both tend to put others before themselves (even if it means putting themselves at risk), and

both have a strong courageous streak.

but then you have the ways they differ from each other, and that's where the "shaped differently by their respective life circumstances" come in.

let's take that courageous streak, for example. we know that's much more pronounced in atem's case; compared to yugi, he's quicker to take action, tends to come across as much more confident, and even when he doesn't actually have a proper plan usually manages to mask that fact by bluffing extremely hard while yugi's unease when he struggles is often much more visible. all of that makes perfect sense when you remember that atem was royalty in life - he was almost certainly raised to be able to project the image of a confident leader from very early, a necessity accelerated by his father's early passing (which, depending on how close his life is meant to be to his real-life inspiration, might've happened before atem even turned 10; at absolute minimum it did impact his teenage years).

the same upbrinding also has a pretty visible impact on atem's ability to share his troubles even with his friends. he's not completely closed off, but he seems to struggle with personal hurt, being more prone to showing anger (especially if there's someone he can defensively lash out at), or withdrawing to somewhere he can let himself be upset on his own (yugi aside). even towards yugi he often doesn't fess up about his personal struggles, with him choosing to hide his conflicted feelings regarding his wish to get his memories back at first and instead squishing them down to pretend he's fine with how things are. he's royalty; royalty must present an image of reliable strength, mustn't let their troubles drag down or endanger those who depend on them. this sometimes causes issues when he's put against someone being stubborn for similar reasons, with the atem vs kaiba duel in duelist kingdom (and how that would've ended with kaiba dead if yugi hadn't switched in to interrupt atem's last move) probably being the best example of that.

in contrast, yugi... is practically an open book. while he also has his moments where he tries to hide things out of worry regarding how others might react (most notably early in the series when he's uneasy about atem's existence still), those instances tend to be more out of fear of a negative reaction or abandonment - which isn't surprising when you remember he's a bullying victim in part because he's more openly emotional, more openly "childish" with peers who frown on that. yugi's emotional openness gets more pronounced the more comfortable he gets with his friend group, and it together with his stronger sense of empathy and the kindness it fosters tend to be the main traits that get highlighted as a strength of his compared to atem, and it's ultimately just as much of a positive influence on him as atem's encouragement of confidence is on yugi.

with the two bakuras things get murkier, since there's a little more going on with thief king bakura than atem due to the corrupting influence of the millennium ring/zorc and both he and ryou are starved for screentime in different ways (bakura for non-duel/battle screentime, ryou in general), but there's still some similarities one can point to, like:

they're both fond of macabre, grotesque, and occultic stuff with both ryou's battle city occult deck and bakura's memory RPG undead lock deck keeping a very similar vibe.

both seem to have genuine interest in monster world/ttrpg stuff and particularly acting as the game master, although the specifics behind their interest and how they go about it... vary a bit.

both like messing with others, even in ways that can be kind of rude/cruel; bakura's more obvious on this front (hi, his reaction to hearing about marik's father), while in ryou's case it's usually more of a light prankster streak (with him getting a kick out of, say, jonouchi's fear of his deck) that he's fine with taking a bit uncomfortably far (helping mai pretend she's dead just so they can see jou's reaction is kinda... yeah.)

both have a tendency to be closed-off liars; bakura regularly obfuscating his true intentions and a lot of info related to it until the midpoint of the memory RPG arc is probably the key example for him, while for ryou it's him regularly hiding things regarding the millennium ring and him continuing to hold onto that thing

both are pretty self-destructively stubborn for the sake of those they care about, with ryou's self-sacrifice to protect his friends in the monster world arc being his prime example, while for bakura there's the whole "starting a single-person avenging war against the egyptian regime" thing in life (and, honestly, kind of him still acting on that even in the present day too considering how long it's been and the fact he's a spirit by then)

for these two the differences are definitely more pronounced than the similarities overall (and also significantly more pronounced than for the yugis in general), but that's not especially surprising when you consider that their life circumstances are also vastly more different than the other set. sure, atem's royalty while yugi's a regular kid, but from what we know atem's upbringing until the point the memory RPG covers was at least pretty stable until akhenamkhanen's death (and even then it seems like things stayed largely alright for him until the conflict with bakura).

meanwhile with this set you have a kid who's lived a fairly normal modern-day life beyond losing his mother and sister to an accident until age 10 or so where a certain malevolent spirit in a cursed artifact his father was looking for nearly kills said father and periodically causes weird incidents to happen around him while he deals with memory lapses and. uh. a guy from a village of thieves who ended up as the sole survivor of the ritualistic genocide of said village as a kid and then grew up having to fend for himself with nothing but the company of the deeply vengeful spirits of his people that he can still hear and see. kinda figures that one of the two would turn out significantly rougher around the edges than the other, i'd say!

at its core, this specific reading does require assuming that if you switched the souls of the two in each set, they would turn out the same way as the other normally would as a result of living through their respective circumstances. that's not a reading everyone's on board with, but i personally like how well it fits with some of takahashi's comments about the entire もう一人の自分 concept and the "idealized self you have to aspire to work toward becoming" vs "a self forced on you by expectations in your life with an unendurable weight that risks making you lose sight of who you could be due to frustration with no outlet" (like this one). it makes each set mirror images that inform each other of what they can be, and (at least in yugi and atem's case since the other two, uh... don't get enough to work with... sigh) gives them a way to learn from each other and grow in a way other character interactions don't facilitate quite as strongly. that's a fun angle to play around with from both a writing- and a character analysis viewpoint, imo.

[dateamonster]

tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"

[dateamonster]

you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.

[seekerbr]

The Early Works of Kazuki Takahashi

So, here we go…

Recently i started trying to research about Kazuki Takahashi’s work from before he created Yu-Gi-Oh, since i find it pretty interesting to see how manga author’s art styles change over time and what elements reappear often in their works, but i soon learned that it is kinda hard to research about his works: not only have most of them never been released again anywhere after they were first published, but there is also not a lot of informations and pictures of them online.

That being said, I did find a lot of things during my research, including a lot of stuff I don't think has even been translated from japanese, so I'm putting them here for more people to see!

BIG WARNING THOUGH: I do not speak japanese, and most of this information was found translating with Google Translator and DeepL, with me joining them up and fixing some grammatical errors, but there might be some big translation mistakes that i didn’t catch, so if you know japanese and sees that something is wrong please inform me in on reblogs; i will put all my sources here to make it easier too.

- The Hajime Miyabi days

In his earlier works, Kazuki Takahashi submitted his stories by the pen name Hajime Miyabi, so this section is named after this first name.

His first published work was a one-shot for the Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine in 1981, and was named Ing! Love Ball; it was made for Shogakukan Newcomer Comic Awards and won first prize! The only picture of it I could find was the cover right here:

I also found this site called Kazuki's Elements and Words, which ended up being essential to this research since it has interviews, synopsis and little descriptions of all of his works! So thanks to it, we get some information about it: There are synopsis to all works on the front page of the site, and here’s the one for this manga: Three guys who love cute girls target a heroine who has a boy crush on her. Knowing her pure heart, they decide to support her, but the story goes that students from another school who target her break in and wreak havoc.

There’s also some Story Previews for this one, that say: A trio of unattractive/unpopular high school students cause havoc at their school! Three guys are always getting dumped. This time, they make a fierce attack on the female manager of the soccer club. However, the girl has a secret crush on the captain of the soccer team. And since there is another rival besides the three of them, they are in big trouble. 

Since this won first place, there are reviews of it by a bunch of famous manga authors, like Leiji Matsumoto and Fujiko Fujio: many of them complimented the love story, but the art was criticized for being hard to follow and messy, and the characters were considered shallow.

His second work was Ano Ko ni Scramble (Scramble for that girl), a one-shot from June, 1982. Found the cover here, and the synopsis is: Dan fell in love with Rio at first sight. The story is about a heroine who doesn't really want to be an idol, and who puts her body on the line to rescue Rio. Seems to be a romance drama.

According to the site, the main guy's name is Gojo Dan (he is described as being “hard-edged”) and the main girl is called Kisaragi Rio; there’s also a dog named Koro. The owner of the site complimented this one for being very sentimental, and also commented: There were many scenes that come to mind for Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, such as the handkerchief with tear marks on it and the episode where the dog bites the buttocks… I’m not sure what he means by that to be honest.

His next work was Kyogaku Sensen SOS!! (Co-educational front SOS!), another one-shot from 1982. Found a cover here:

Synopsis is: A boys' school and a girls' school decide to merge, and the hero and heroine team up to prevent it! In the end, the hero and heroine are unable to prevent the merger, but love buds between the two.

The site says that it is a romantic comedy,that the main dude's name is Yuya Hitoyoshi and the lady is Chiharu Kazama. This Yuya is described as having selfish and passionate beliefs. Also found this blog from a Yu-Gi-Oh fan that read both this manga and the next, having this to say about this one: A love story. The content is so hot that even I blush when I read it.The heroine is cute!

(BTW I tried researching a bit, and I'm unsure if the “hot content” part is saying that the story is sexy, or if it is sentimental… who knows, maybe it’s both)

Next we have Yu Yua Yu, a one-shot from the end of 1982. This one I could only find a picture on this video by youtube channel Yaku Mitsuru's Secret Treasure House, so sorry by the stuff over the picture:

Synopsis is: Isamu lives with his mother and sister. The mother is a detective who loves motorcycles and Magnum. This is a heartwarming story in which the affection between parent and child deepens through the case.

Main character seems to be a guy named Isamu Uesugi, the mother is called Yu Uesugi and the sister is named Yua Uesugi, and she’s apparently older than him. Apparently a point of conflict in the story is the mother being very busy with work and the son wanting to spend time and get pampered by her. Both the owner of the site and that blog post praised this one for its sentimental moments, and the parent-child dynamic.

This one was his last work to be published in Weekly Shonen Sunday; from 1983, it’s a one-shot called Hajimemashite Ran Desu!! (Nice to meet you, I'm Ran!). I found a cover here:

Synopsis is: When a mysterious teacher wearing a gakuran arrives at a new school, he falls in love at first sight with a beautiful teacher. Her rival is the gym teacher, Mr. Tsukinowa. This is a story of a heated love battle between teachers.

Some story elements from the site: the main guy is called Rindo Ran, and was created to be an ideal teacher, being really nice and cool; his love interest is named Mii Aima, and is a music teacher, and she has a younger brother named Hayal Aima, who is also very cool apparently. The owner of the site mentions that the story being focused on teachers was pretty rare and refreshing, but the main character acts pretty childish. 

- The Kazuo Takahashi days

Now we move to the next era of Takahashi’s work, where he started to use his real name in his manga, Kazuo Takahashi (yeah, Kazuki is not his real name!). His first work under this name was also his first serialized work: Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman, released on Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 1986; that being said, it was not an original creation of his, but an adaptation of an anime of the same name. This one actually has a lot of pictures online, starting with some cover pictures:

Synopsis is: A story about Ikki Sawamura, a.k.a. Ikki Man, who saves the earth from extinction by playing "Battle Ball," a sport similar to baseball. Myanimelist above also mentions that there are aliens on this, and that Ikki himself is an alien… so this is pretty different from his previous down-to-earth romance stuff. 

The site has two pages about it, and says that having the anime and manga being made at the same time made this a “tightrope walking project”, but they still enjoyed the manga on it’s own right, especially because of the development of the characters, like the main character Ikki and his rival Samson, who they find one of Takahashi’s best characters (maybe because of his appearance being attractive?? the translator is kinda weird on this part). 

Here’s some pictures of the interior (i believe Samson is the buff guy in that second picture). (sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

His next work was the first of his manga to be released in 1990 on Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump, where all of his future manga would be published; it was called Tokio no Taka (Eagle of the King of the Flame? this title is complicated to translate). Cover from this Twitter post:

Synopsis is: A story about cool people fighting for justice and leaving for the wilderness in the end… Which is kinda vague, and there’s not a lot of information on the site besides some comments that it is more serious than his previous and later works, how it was clearly inspired by Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and that it’s page count was impressive. We do have an interior picture, and one photo that shows a little interview that Takahashi did, with a cute doodle of himself. (Sources 1 is that twitter post, 2 is here). This is also the only one-shot to be re-released after its first publishing, on an issue of his next serialized work.

His next work was a one-shot called Battle Mind, from 1991; we have only a cover for this one, but I find it very interesting, since the design of the lady is very similar to Tea/Anzu, especially that hairstyle, and her clothes kinda look like what she wore in Death T!

Synopsis is: A story about a boy whose homeland is invaded by a dictator, who awakens with supernatural powers, fights alongside resisters, and drives out the invader. According to the site, the hero's name is Kurenai Shinku and the lady who looks like Tea is "Lime". Also, the page mentions that Takahashi talks a lot about a guy named Antonio Inoki on this, a wrestler that notably inspired that face that Joey makes a lot in the anime. At first I thought he might have helped in some way in this, but reading better I now believe it was just Takahashi fanboying because he met him before finishing the manuscript for this.

And now, his last work before Yu-Gi-Oh was serialized from 1991 until 1992, this time a completely original work of his: Tennenshoku Danji Buray (Man of Natural Color BURAY? Another one with a weird name to translate…) This one also has a ton of images, beginning with all the covers, with this main character that looks a lot like Mako Tsunami/Ryota Kajiki in some pictures:

Synopsis: Buray uses his strong body to make money as a "hit man". His reason for making dangerous money is to support the orphanage where he grew up. However, the main reason is to attract the attention of Ms. Ruriko, who runs the orphanage.... This moving film follows Burai, who thinks only of himself, as he grows into a full-fledged man through the lives of the people he encounters through professional wrestling. Yeah, Takahashi loved wrestling, if this and the previous entry didn't tell you.

The site has three different pages for the Buray manga, and the second one is the most interesting for me: it shows that during the manga’s run, they released a survey asking the readers some questions about the manga, like what they thought about the art, the main character, the plot, and most interesting of all, what they wished to happen next (though according to the site’s owner, all options eventually happened in the story). Here are the options given:

And now we have the images from the interior of the manga, and they are fascinating for me for how different they are from the YGO artstyle, yet you still can find some familiar things; these older men from pictures 4 and 5 and some of the more expressive faces are very YGO, for example! (sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

- Kazuki Takahashi era, AKA Our Conclusion 

A few years after Buray, in September of 1996, Kazuo would take the pen name Kazuki Takahashi and create Yu-Gi-Oh for Weekly Shonen Jump, which is where this research ends. His work from after YGO is a lot easier to find online, so I will not talk about it in here, but i think that seeing how much his artstyle changed over time:

Looking after pictures of those first one-shots, I saw that a lot of the covers for Weekly Shōnen Sunday from around that time had something related to Urusei Yatsura on it, and i’m guessing his manga were trying to go for that niche, with very a very rounded artstyle and romance and comedy as a big element. After he did Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman, which probably had to follow the look that the anime already had, he seemed to try a more Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure/Fist of the North Star with Tokio no Taka and Buray for some extent, while Battle Mind seems to have a more traditional 80s manga style, but in all of these you can see some elements that will be seen again in Yu-Gi-Oh beginning to appear (like those buff men from Ikkiman, Tokio no Taka and BURAY kinda reminding me of Ushiou and Goro Inogashira).

And then when you get to YGO, his style begins with traces of those previous works, but develops to become a lot more unique, a way more stylized look full of pointy chins and big hair; it was honestly super cool to see how much it changed from that beginning with his weird one-shot that somehow won a first prize in a Newcomers competition.

I’m not very good at finishing essays to be honest, so i’ll end this by putting a last picture in here: one of his way later works from 2020, coming from this account that used to translate his instagram posts: 

Thanks for reading it!

[seekerbr]

Reblogging this again because I found the one cover I was missing (the one for Ano Ko ni Scramble (あの娘にスクランブル))!!

Really happy to finally be able to "complete" this in a way!

[nintendocompositions]

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