Yugi's Battle City Monsters: The Magnet Warrior Trio- and Magnet Warrior Valkyrion!
Normally I'd limit the amount of cards I put in a post, but given the subject matter I just had to put these three together. These all rank among my favorite monster designs of the Monster Cards in Yugi's Battle City deck- and their combined form is even more spectacular!
Without further ado: the Magnet Warriors!
"Magnet Warrior α"! A fierce, heroic-looking figure to be sure. You might compare this to Konami's art and figure it has a ton of coloring errors, but in the context of the coloring applied in the manga it only has one; the magnet polarity tips of the 'U'-shaped magnet on its head are swapped. Its shoulder 'U' magnets are always drawn with the blue ends facing the top in at least its first few appearances, and the sword's crossguard polarity tips match its look in at least a few panels as well.
"Magnet Warrior β"! Of the three "Magnet Warrior" cards, this one is my personal favorite in terms of character design. I've also always found it funny that, despite being the simplest and silliest-looking of the monsters in this set, it's got the highest base attack power of all three "Magnet Warriors".
And "Magnet Warrior γ"! The last one to debut in the manga, and the monster whose summon heralds the combined form you'll see below the cut!
My original version of this card had a pretty bad text error. (I still can't believe I missed it during my proofreading sessions!) I found the Greek characters surprisingly hard to work with in my image editor. Very glad I was able to correct this error!
Now that this post has brought them together, what will happen next?
As stated, when Dark Yugi gets all three of these guys on-field, they become...
Panel excerpt from chapter 188, "Power Combined!!".
"Magnetic Magnet Warrior Valkyrion", the strongest non-god monster Dark Yugi summons throughout the course of the manga! Strictly speaking, its name 「磁石の戦士マグネット・バルキリオン」 should more literally be rendered as "Magnet Warrior Magnet Valkyrion", where the words 'magnet' and 'Valkyrion' are written out in a 'cooler' way.
I wasn't sure how to handle this at first. Eventually, I decided a more localization-style approach was best for this case. I reinterpreted 「マグネット」 as 'magnetic' and placed it at the front of the name, so that it would sound slightly less redundant to native English speakers.
There's also the matter of just what kind of summon this monster counts as. In Konami's game, it's considered a Special Summon, though it uses sacrificing to do so, unlike its manga counterpart.
In the manga, however, the Trap Magic Card "De-Fusion" works on it, which means it's considered a fused/Fusion Monster in some way. But Dark Yugi doesn't use "Fusion" to summon it! So what's the deal here?
Well, when it's summoned, Dark Yugi and the Mask of Light say this:
Panel excerpts from chapter 188, "Power Combined!!".
Here in its debut chapter, they only seem to call it by the phrase 「変形合体」, which to my (admittedly very rough) understanding means something vague like 'combined form'.
In the next chapter, though, Dark Yugi plays "De-Fusion", and Mask of Darkness now says this:
Panel from chapter 189, "The Strongest Summon!!".
He calls "Valkyrion" a 「特殊融合」, "Special Fusion". In other words, this dialogue implies that "Valkyrion" is a kind of summon that's either between or both a Special Summon and a Fusion Summon, done entirely through the "Magnet Warrior"'s special abilities. Pretty unique!
While a similar concept shows up later in the Battle City arc, with Seto Kaiba's "X-Y-Z" monster trio, those monsters and their own particular combining ability are referred to in dialogue as 'magnet' monsters instead. So there's sadly no consistency here on Takahashi's part.
Well, time to put the magnets back on the fridge here, so to speak. Thanks for reading! Remember: if there are any of Yugi's manga cards you'd like to see a post about, let me know and I'll feature that card on this blog! Until tomorrow!
Yes, "Red-Eyes Black Dragon" is absolutely a part of this project too!
"Red-Eyes Black Dragon" is indisputably an iconic and beloved card. Over the years, Konami's game has built an entire archetype around using this card in competitive play. But its original manga version is, of course, much simpler than what it would become.
This is famously Katsuya Jonouchi's (known as Joey Wheeler to many English fans) trademark card, after he wins it from an ill-fated bet started by Dinosaur Ryuzaki (Rex Raptor).
Of course, this project is focused on cards Yugi Mutou used. Indeed, Dark Yugi won this card as his ante from the Exodia-using Rare Hunter, who had stolen it from Jonouchi the night before Battle City started. The Yugis later went on to use it during a few key duels, including the semi-final Kaiba duel and the duel where Yugi had to break Jonouchi out of Malik's Millennium Rod-induced mind control. Yugi intended to give it back to Jonouchi in a duel after the Battle City tournament was over.
So here, I'm choosing to look at this card from two perspectives. First, at its traits as a Magic & Wizards game piece. Second- and perhaps more importantly- I'll consider what this card means to Yugi and Dark Yugi. Simple stuff, in both cases.
In the manga, Magic & Wizards cards have quite a few properties that aren't shown on the cards we, the readers, see on-panel. Because of this, there are many cards we know little about even if they're shown frequently in the manga.
"Red-Eyes Black Dragon" is not one of those cards. In fact, I'd say that, of them all, Red-Eyes is probably the card whose 'hidden' properties we know the most about, even compared to, say, its counterpart "Blue-Eyes White Dragon".
So what are these un-'printed' properties? Well:
Panel taken from chapter 79, "The Ticking Clock!".
"Red-Eyes Black Dragon" is a Dark attribute monster. This is an aspect retained in Konami's game.
Panel excerpt from chapter 79, "The Ticking Clock!".
Its attack is called "Black Fire Bullet".
Panels taken from chapter 86, "The Secret Weapon"/"New Weapon Capability!!". The image on the left is a scan from "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist: Volume 3"; the image on the right is my scan from "Weekly Shonen Jump" #1502, #30 1998, cover date 6 July 1998.
"Red-Eyes Black Dragon" has a Fire attribute attack. Note that Viz's English translation chose to omit this information, but if you check the original Japanese version, it explicitly mentions 炎 (fire) 属性 (attribute) in Yugi's dialogue here.
To be brief: Konami's game didn't retain this mechanic, but in the manga, a monster's attack can either be a physical attack or have other special properties. Some monsters, like Red-Eyes, have an attack with one of 7 elemental attributes, the same ones that the monsters themselves have. Notably, Red-Eyes proves that a monster's attack attribute can be different from its own inherent attribute.
Panel from chapter 97, "The Final Card!!". The younger of the MeiKyû brothers is referring to "Black Demon's Dragon" (Black Skull Dragon) and, in turn, its component part "Red-Eyes Black Dragon".
Panel from chapter 123, "The Final Turn!!". This card- originally called "Dark Dragon-Type's Claws" in Japan- is successfully equipped to a "Red-Eyes Black Dragon" (albeit one modified with a duplicate of the Trap Equip Card "Metallization: Magic-Reflecting Armor"), showing that Red-Eyes is indeed a valid monster that fits all the criteria listed in this card's text. Image slightly edited for the sake of presentation.
Red-Eyes is a Dragon-type monster. This is mostly not directly stated (as it's fairly obvious), but these panels are among the few that come close to saying it outright.
Panel from chapter 97, "The Final Card!!".
Red-Eyes has the flying ability, as many Dragon-type monsters do.
That's a lot of information not printed on its card! As the person who runs this project, I wish every other cards had so many of its hidden traits revealed to the readers.
But let's get to the other point. And like I said, it's pretty simple. To both Yugi and Dark Yugi, Red-Eyes is simply a manifestation of their bond with Jonouchi himself, a symbol of their friendship together. Which, hey- friendship is one of the central themes of the story! So in that sense, even if it doesn't do too much directly, "Red-Eyes Black Dragon" carries a lot of weight while Yugi keeps it safe among his monsters.
Panel from chapter 260, "Red Spirit!!".
Thanks for reading! Here's a bonus fact: Red-Eyes actually had a surprise early cameo appearance in a color title page for chapter 52, "Millennium Enemy 2: Monster World":
Image scan from Yugipedia, uploaded by Deltaneos; click here to see it in its original context.
There he is, on the right! Funny to think that it shows up here more than 20 chapters before its formal debut during Duelist Kingdom!
Yugi's Battle City Monsters: The Beast-King and the Demon, or: Winged Mythical Beast Chimera
We'll start off our proper Battle City Monster Card coverage with the two monsters we see Dark Yugi use in the first fight of the arc, against the Exodia-wielding Rare Hunter. These are, of course, the same two that can fuse together to form "Winged Mythical Beast Chimera" (or "Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast")!
Make way for the king! It's "Mythical Beast King Gazelle"!
The 幻獣 in this card's Japanese name, 「幻獣王ガゼル」, confused me the first time I was checking name translations in my project. I wasn't sure just what to make of the idea of a 'phantom/mythical beast'. After referencing various languages resources (jisho and weblio really helped me out here!), I learned that another equivalent for 幻獣 would be 'cryptid', which greatly cleared things up!
(In fact, I was strongly considering calling my version of this card "Cryptid King Gazelle" at one point, which is a name that would definitely fit on the top of a card better...but I think 'mythical beast' is the intent here, all things considered.)
A neat thing about Yugi's Battle City deck is that most of the monster types present in it all reflect the monster types he had back in Duelist Kingdom. Warriors, Knights, Demons, Magic-Users, Dragons...and, as we see here, Beasts! The only thing is, there are slightly less monsters in the Battle City deck's original lineup than there are in the Duelist Kingdom lineup, so some types, like Beast, go under-represented here.
Fun fact: in Yu-Gi-Oh! R, this monster's attribute is said to be Wood, an attribute exclusive to the manga continuity and one that's pretty rare for a monster to have. I'm not 100% sure this is also the case in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga; but the author of that series, Akira Ito, was an assistant for the main series who worked closely with original author Kazuki Takahashi on both works, so it's possible he got this information from Takahashi himself.
New deck, new demons! "Baphomet" breaks free like a bat outta hell!
Naturally, Konami international censored this name as "Berfomet" to avoid any demonic accusations by certain watchdog groups of the '00s. Of course, this card still bears many demonic traits regardless, so I can only guess those groups weren't paying too much attention, thankfully!
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that this illustration contains a coloring error. For whatever reason, there are many monsters in the Battle City arc that frequently have coloring issues in the 2016 color version of the manga. "Baphomet" is one, but this group also includes "Magnet Warrior α", "Dark Demon Gilfer", and even some versions of "Black Magician Girl"!
In this case, the art I used as the source for my "Baphomet" card's illustration was the biggest possible art piece I could use. All the others were very tiny in comparison. It's another case where sometimes, you have to make a tradeoff, and I prioritized image resolution over these small errors.
I suspect this monster has the flying ability, thanks to its wings. (In fact, the only monster that ever kills it is "Blue-Eyes White Dragon", which also has the flying ability.) Furthermore, since its fused form, "Winged Mythical Beast Chimera", also has wings (that it likely inherited from this card!), I suspect it can fly as well.
Of course, we never see too much of "Baphomet" OR "Winged Mythical Beast Chimera" in this arc, so we'll never be able to tell any of that for sure.
A promising start, with a few fun monsters! But tomorrow we've got a real titan of a card. Thanks for reading, and see you then!
We're going to do something a little different today!
My project involved recreating every Magic & Wizards card Yugi was shown to have in the manga, limited only to the monsters that I could, in fact, recreate.
The two monsters that are the subject of this post are an interesting edge case to that mission statement, due to how they showed up on-panel. See for yourself below:
In chapter 146, "The Ancient Lithograph", Yugi is shown recovering after the fire that occurred at the end of the D.D.D. (short for Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons) arc. (This is known as the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc outside of Japan.)
While he's in the hospital, Jonouchi cheers him up by playing a few games of Magic & Wizards (which goes about as well for him as you'd expect!).
In this chapter, Yugi says that he's rebuilt his deck with Dark Yugi during his stay in the hospital. And we see proof of that with the two Monster Cards in the right panel, which are entirely new.
So what are these new cards, anyway? In-universe, they're pretty immaterial; just new monster cards that never appear again. Out-of-universe is a different story, though.
The cards are clearly meant to be two monsters original to Konami's game: Tyhone and Terra the Djinn (called "Terra the Terrible" here). It's the first time Konami cards appeared in the manga. And they would be followed by a scant few more Konami-original cards over the course of the Battle City arc (as I mentioned in my post on "Pot of Greed").
Since they were Yugi's cards, used by him on-panel, they fell under the parameters of my project. But the size of the art for these two was so small that no amount of reworking would make them look good.
For a while, I was stumped. I feared they would fall in the category of cards that I simply couldn't recreate. Then I realized: these cards were based on Konami's art to begin with. What if I changed Konami's art to look like Takahashi's renditions? Would that work?
This is how they turned out!
Here's "Tyhone"!
It was nice of Takahashi to include this particular monster in the manga. "Tyhone" was originally designed by a fan, Masanori Tanaka, who sent it in as part of a 'design-a-monster' contest held before the release of the first Yu-Gi-Oh! video game, "Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule Breed and Battle".
Courtesy of Yugipedia, here's what its original card face looked like when it was released as part of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters: Vol. 2" on 27 March 1999.
And here's "Terra the Djinn"! As you can see, Konami international's translators removed the 'djinn'/'genie' part of the name from their version of this card.
Again, courtesy of Yugipedia, here's a link to what its original card face looked like when it was released as part of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters: Vol. 2" on 27 March 1999.
The goal of this project was to present Takahashi's original cards, using Takahashi's original artwork, to the greatest extent that was realistically possible. On one hand, I couldn't preserve the original artist's art for these two. On the other hand, Takahashi wasn't necessarily the original artist of the illustrations in question! So I suppose it all balances out in the end.
Thanks for reading! Tomorrow we'll finally start on Yugi's Battle City cards proper. But don't forget- if there are any other Yugi manga cards you have questions about, fire away and I'd be glad to write up a little detour for ya here!
