#yza misc

[ygozexalarchive]

Glass Astral sculpture by Kazuhiko Yakushiji (薬師寺一彦) (artist profile; Instagram; Twitter)

The Astral was sculpted in inspiration of Kazuki Takahashi's illustration of Astral portrayed with a marine tail and displayed in a mini Yu-Gi-Oh! Art exhibition in 2014 (Toshima Manufacturing Messe)

Kazuhiko Yakushiji was a good friend of Kazuki Takahashi and has great interest in marine life, especially dolphins, and has previously made many other sculptures depicting such marine mammals as well as Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Kisara (As well as Emperor Key themed trophies)

[ygozexalarchive]

From @anthyvarietyhour: "When Nicktoons was airing Yugioh Zexal and other anime (Danball Senki, Digimon, etc), they had a page on their website where they wrote character bios, had games, and chatrooms. These pages are obviously gone, and from captures I could find on the Internet Archive, the games and chatrooms don't appear to be functional anymore.

However, what IS available are the character bios! I'm unsure if there are any for Zexal II, these are just what I found while looking.

Something funny to note is that Nicktoons must have really liked Zexal/really wanted to market it, because this has more profiles than any of the other series. Lines up with how often I remember seeing ads for it."

Thank you very much for the submission and trivia!

[ygozexalarchive]

Illustrations of Yuma and Astral, as well as Shark by クシャビリア and Kaito by LB featured on posters in the 2015 Shanghai YGO Duel Karneval

Couldn't find the originals for Yuma and Astral :(

As far as I can tell, this is a large scale fan convention with no support from Konami, so technically this isn't "official art" but still cool stuff and trivia!

[ygozexalarchive]

Zexal Valentine's Day comic/storyboards illustrated by director Kuwabara. These were only made for fun and never meant to go into actual production of the show

[ygozexalarchive]

Near life-size No. 39 Hope (Utopia) statue which was displayed in the 2012 Jump Fiesta, the 2012 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship in Japan and the 2013 Toyfair in America. It was built to be lightweight and capable of disassembly so it was not only easy to transport but could also be changed into a second pose (Which, I have to assume, just meant rotating the arms as seen in the available photos)

[ygozexalarchive]

A peculiar Zexal character design provided by Kazuki Takahashi, named Mizael yet seemingly interpreted into one of Vector's forms instead

The original concept has similarities to Mizael's Barian form such as the wing-like formation(s) on the mask and especially the pendant. Otherwise, the design was pretty faithfully translated into "Devil Vector"

Theories as to why this might be the case could be: 1. This was always the "Vector" character, the names might just not have been decided on yet (supported by the fact that Mizael's name is followed by "???" in the original concept) 2. Mizael was indeed supposed to look like that until Studio Gallop changed it but wanted to make use of or pay homage to Kazuki's design elsewhere

Kazuki doesn't appear to have designed any Barians aside from Nasch and no Barian forms excluding the sketch above. He likely had an idea for the Barians given Nasch (note that all his concept art for Shark has him wearing the pendant). Referring back to theory 2, it's possible the character that ended up being Mizael was intended to have a bigger role/be a more major villain, but we can only speculate

[ygozexalarchive]

Emperor Key Trophies by Kazuhiko Yakushiji (薬師寺一彦) (artist profile; Instagram; Twitter)

The glass trophies were sculpted in 2014 to be given out at the Jump Victory Carnival (1st place sculpture is blue, 2nd red, 3rd and 4th clear/white) and later displayed in a mini Yu-Gi-Oh! Art exhibition, also in 2014. He has also made Pendulum themed trophies depicting Yuya's pendulum, as well as a glass sculpture of Astral

[ygozexalarchive]

Per Yu-Gi-Oh! tradition, Zexal features 3 viewer-designed monsters: Bachibachibachi, Dotedotengu and Tatakawa Knight, all released in 2011 in the OCG