I created near-replicas of all of Yugi's cards and decks from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga.
Since today, November 25th, is the 29th anniversary of the first appearance of Magic & Wizards (or Duel Monsters, the name most people know it by) in Yu-Gi-Oh!, I figured this would be a nice way to mark the occasion.
I tried to make the template for these as close to the original in-manga Japanese cards as possible in terms of layout. (The card faces from Viz's translation were slightly changed to resemble the official cards).
(Decks pictured above: left, Yugi's original deck from "The Cards with Teeth" parts 1 and 2; right, Yugi's Grandpa's deck from the "Death-T" arc.)
All card names were re-translated to be as accurate to the original names as I could make them.
Similarly, the card text is altered to make it so that they actually reflect how the cards were used in duels, as the original text was sometimes not really reflective of how the cards worked, and some cards had no text at all.
(Decks pictured above: the"Duelist Kingdom" arc deck; the "Battle City" arc deck; and the two decks from the final duel, combined into one image for formatting purposes).
While there were a few obscure cards that were impossible to replicate, I'm proud of the work I was able to do with these.
It took me two years to make these cards, and I had a lot of help along the way. The biggest contributors were Alaz, Meow, and Icycatelf. Other contributors and referenced resource creators include Bustedsides, Shadow Force, Bog, and the Yugipedia admin team- Deltaneos, Cheesedude, and so many others.
And, of course, the art and original look and text of the cards is all from the mind/hands of Kazuki Takahashi. I consider this project to be a tribute to him and a mark of the influence his works left on the world.
By the way, I've taken more shots than what you see here. So if you have a favorite card that Yugi used in the manga that you want to see, let me know and I'll post a pic of it on this blog!
Hope you enjoyed seeing these things! It was a joy to work on this.
Indeed, "Time Wizard"- or "Time Magician" here- does count as one of Yugi's cards in this project!
Since we saw Yugi give it to Jonouchi during a flashback in Chapter 71, "Things that Don't Change":
I count this as "a card Yugi owned or used", so it's part of my project.
Additionally, in the fourth chapter of the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Jump Jbooks novel by Katsuhiko Chiba (Yugipedia article link here), we read about Yugi pulling this card, and "Baby Dragon", from a Magic & Wizards pack before using the two cards together in a duel against a shadowy, Kaiba-like figure. (If you want to read this novel, a user here named @shinhoroko translated it and posted all chapters on their blog. Here's a link to that translated fourth chapter, if you're curious about it.) It's unclear if this novel is canon to the manga, but I understand that Chiba consulted with Takahashi when writing this book, so some details of it could at least reflect the manga canon.
You'll notice that I present two versions of this card up top. My first version of the card contained two errors: I accidentally misinterpreted the function of the card in a similar way to Konami, and my text had a typo to boot.
See, specifically in the Duelist Kingdom version of the manga's Magic & Wizards "Standard" ruleset, there's a special penalty rule: if a monster you control is destroyed outside of a monster battle, you lose a number of Life Points equal to half of their combined total original/printed attack value (though the first time it happens in Chapter 66, "The Trap!!", it's more like 1/4 of the combined total original/printed attack value(s) of any so-destroyed monsters instead).
The only time this rule is explicitly called attention to is after Jonouchi's failed use of "Time Magician" in Chapter 90, "Call from the Grave", so it's easy to make that mistake. However, a thorough review of the rules presented in the manga revealed that my card was incorrect, so I ended up revising it, as you see in the second version of the card above.
Info on "Time Magician"'s illustration and card effect under the cut.
Some of you may be surprised to find that "Time Magician" is a Magic Card in the manga, as Konami turned it into a Monster Card in their game.
There are at least three different ways we can confirm this.
First, throughout all of Jonouchi's useages of "Time Magician"- in Chapters 70, 79, 90, and 121/122- he always plays it as a Magic Card, as it stays in effect only when it is played and is sent to the Graveyard immediately once its effect resolves. Furthermore, Jonouchi plays it into his backrow (in Duelist Kingdom, this largely seems to be when players play their cards on the row closest to themselves, or partially/totally off that row on the 5x8/6x8 field grid) much as other players do when they use their own Magic Cards.
Secondly, in his author comment for the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 21" tankobon (released 2 November, 2000), Takahashi shares a list of his "Top 10 Monster Cards", and says this: "9. [Time Magician]. It's actually more like a [magic] card than a monster card, but..."
Finally, in the sourcebook "Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth", released 1 November, 2002, Takahashi has a section dedicated to cataloguing all non-Monster Cards. And here, on page 191, "Time Magician" is specifically noted to be a Magic Card.
Now. Take another look at "Time Magician"'s illustrations above. Compare what you see in both images.
You will notice that the face area on the Konami version is blue and yellow, while the face area shown in the in-manga illustration doesn't have any backing there at all. This seems to be due to a misunderstanding that Konami's illustration team had- "Time Magician"'s face-like features are meant to be floating freely within its ring body!
Yugipedia shows us that Bandai's art team picked up on this. (They also didn't make the same effect mistake that Konami did. Bandai, admittedly, made a lot of mistakes with their interpretation of Magic & Wizards, but to their credit their version of this specific card is much more accurate in these ways!)
Let's take one last look at "Time Magician" and its effect as it's seen in the manga.
It's almost completely blank!
And it's easy to see why: Takahashi plays up this card's effect for dramatic tension constantly, slowly revealing new aspects of it through the Duelist Kingdom arc in a similar manner to what he would do for the god card Ra later in the Battle City arc.
Which is all well and good, but that did give me a little trouble when deciding how this card should function and how its effect should be written.
For instance, the card is said to have two different behaviors, one for when "Baby Dragon" is on-field and one when it isn't. So how does that actually work? Should I rest the "Thousand Dragon" function entirely on "Time Magician", or is it meant to be understood that "Baby Dragon" has a special ability that only activates when "Time Magician" is on-field? I opted for the former, combining it with "Time Magician"'s second behavior - more on that below.
During that second behavior, "Time Magician" is shown to spin a "Time Roulette" wheel, where the player has a 1-in-3 chance of success. Here, success "ages" all on-field monsters, something that isn't necessarily helpful to its controller if they don't have any "long-lived" monsters...however that's defined.
Failure, as marked with a little skull symbol on the Time Roulette wand, sucks all of your monsters (and "Time Magician" apparently!) into an errant time vortex, thereby destroying them.
And, while Yugi claims these to be two different behaviors in Chapter 79, "Time Ticking!!", this only seems to be true the first time the card shows up. Recall that in Chapter 70, "Things that Don't Change", Time Magic just ages up "Baby Dragon" 1000 years as soon as "Time Magician"'s effect activates.
Yet in Chapter 121, "Betting on Victory!!", Jonouchi uses "Time Magician" when "Baby Dragon" is around and suddenly the Time Roulette wheel spins up and has to succeed before "Baby Dragon" ages up- meaning that the two behaviors have now merged into one!
Given all of this, it only made sense to leave this as all one effect, and to make "Thousand Dragon" a sort of implied transformation that could happen to cards like "Baby Dragon". I also interpreted that 1-in-3 Time Roulette effect as a die roll. That seemed the easiest way to translate the ability into real life without involving any sci-fi hologram technology!
Lastly...I believe the anonymous asker mentioned "Kunai with Chain"?
That one is solely a Jonouchi card. Though Jonouchi does use it to aid Dark Yugi's "Elf Swordsman" in Chapter 93, it pretty much stays exclusively in his deck.
I do, of course, have that card. Consider it another bonus:
I decided to interpret its name as "Chained Boomerang".
The card's original text only mentions its activation trigger condition and the fact that a monster can equip it for a 500-point attack boost.
The immobilizing aspect seemed important enough to include (even if it's inconsistent, as in Chapter 121, "Approaching Machine", it's unclear if this binding effect occurs in its use there).
Thus, I decided to apply it in the same way that Konami did on their card. It seemed like a common-sense way to make it work.
In Chapter 181, "Conquer the Sea!!", this card's chain apparently allows a monster to swing around the field if they tie it to a large enough object! I figure this less to be a function of the card and more a consequence of the Duel Disk's virtual fantasy battle simulator system, though.
I do somewhat regret one thing about my rendition of this card. In the manga, its text specifies that you can equip it onto a Monster Card once you activate it, which by my figuring technically means I should technically class this as an "Equip Trap Card" like "Metallization". The function itself is intact, though, and the in-manga card only claims itself to be a "Trap Card", so I ultimately figure that this should be sufficiently accurate.
And there we go! Thanks as always for reading. If anyone would like to see another of Yugi's manga cards- perhaps one of his own Trap Cards, for instance?- feel free to respond or send an ask and I'll present it to you here!
