#buster blader

[jisuto]

[diabellica]

[animepopheart]

★ 【ikuyoan】 「 バスター・ブレイダー 」 ✔ republished w/permission ☆ follow btt’s fanart twitch stream!

[joshgajin]

I used to be a HUGE Yu-Gi-Oh fan (Magic The Gathering is far superior btw). I also used to be a huge "magicians" archetype fan. So yeah. Here's an old traditional drawing of Dark Paladin.

[magicandwizards29anniversary]

Of all the monsters residing in Yugi's Battle City deck, only one of them has a reputation as being a bona fide legendary dragon slayer- "Buster Blader"!

This card is a personal favorite of mine, one that I've been a fan of ever since I was a kid. And I'm not alone- "Buster Blader" is a pretty popular monster in the fandom-at-large! Personally I think it's all due to that armor design. It's just too cool.

In spite of its coolness, it doesn't have a lot of appearances in the manga! It only shows up in 2 duels: the one where Dark Yugi faces off against the Malik-controlled Dark Hunter, called the Doll (or Strings in the anime's dub), and the big Dark Yugi vs Kaiba Battle City semi-finals duel near the end of the arc. That last one in particular is all-too-brief, but at least he gets to become part of another awesome monster, "Mighty Magical Swordsman: Black Paladin" (called just "Dark Paladin" outside of Japan)!

Fun fact! 'Dragon Buster Blade' is the name of this knight's sword.

Panel from chapter 173, "Combo of Despair!".

Strange to think that the "Buster Blader" card is really named more for the sword in its illustration and less for its wielder!

Color scheme curiosities for this card under the cut!

So here's something interesting. This card made its manga debut on 24 April 2000. By 28 September 2000, it came out in Konami's game through the Curse of Anubis booster release. On that card, it has the same colorscheme as the Konami card you see at the top of this post.

On 8/20 December 2008 (the release date of this pack varies), the promotional Anniversary Pack came out, featuring new artwork for classic cards illustrated by author Kazuki Takahashi. In these pieces, he often used what seems to be the original colorschemes he envisioned for the monsters depicted in this set. Yugipedia shows us what "Buster Blader" looks like this in this set:

Image sourced from Yugipedia; click here to see it in its original context.

While the sword depicted in this art matches its look in Konami's card, "Buster Blader" himself has red detailing and trim here, something that no other art of this card has.

What might be the origin of this colorscheme?

Let's turn our attention to "Mighty Magical Swordsman: Black Paladin".

Page from chapter 261, "Beyond Hatred!!".

This monster debuted in chapter 261, "Beyond Hatred!!", released on 15 April 2002. By 19 September 2002, it had a Konami card, released in the Champions of Black Magic booster set, and in that illustration this monster's colorscheme pretty much matches what you see above.

Now take a look at the cover for "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters Official Card Game: Official Card Catalog: The Valuable Book 5":

Image sourced from Yugipedia; Click here to see it in its original context.

Featured on the right of this image is "Black Paladin", alongside its other forms, and also "Black Magician Girl". The book came out on 4 October 2002.

Take note of that. It came out the month after Konami released their card, yet this version of "Black Paladin" has an entirely different, black-and-red colorscheme. Consider that every monster on the cover of this book has a colorscheme that was accurate to the manga at the time, and not Konami's game (compare "Magician of Black Chaos"'s colors here to its Konami card from 1999).

I theorize that this is what Takahashi originally intended for "Black Paladin"'s colors.

Now, go back and take a look at the '08 Anniversary Pack illustration for "Buster Blader". Doesn't its colorscheme there greatly resemble "Black Paladin"'s colorscheme on this book?

Because of that, my theory goes even further. Consider that, in the manga, the fused form of 2 monsters takes various traits from the monsters used in its fusion. "Black Paladin" takes so much of its visual look from "Black Magician"; what if, in the manga, the intention was that it took its colorscheme (along with other minor visual details) from "Buster Blader"?

So I think, in Takahashi's mind, "Buster Blader" always had the red details colorscheme we associate with the 2008 Anniversary Pack card. And that his use of that specific colorschme on the cover of the 2002 Valuable Book, on its fused form "Black Paladin", proves that he was coloring with that as his aim- 6 years before he was able to show the world his preferred colorscheme for "Buster Blader"!

And now we've heard all there is on "Buster Blader". Thanks as always for reading! Next up, we've got another iconic Battle City card. 'Til then!

[mrbondz]

Buster Blader

[mrtoptenlist]

One of the most interesting aspects of Yugioh fusions is seeing how the monster visually reflects it, so for this video, we're looking at monsters that got upgraded into fusions, either because they visually always felt like one, or it just seemed cool!

[druthedruid]

Back at the end of spookie season to share some more monsters