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.
✨ It’s official. I can pass away peacefully now. After seeing this, my soul is ascending. Don’t expect any more posts from me — I can see the light. ✨ (Also, HOW is this man this gorgeous??? This should be illegal.)
