Yusei, Crow, Kiryu and Jack apparently used to be members of the Batman Boy Scouts.
Their uniforms were terrible.
Turning into a dark signer obviously has made Kiryu prone to laughter-related seizures.
Yusei, Crow, Kiryu and Jack don't actually age, or else they're all a lot older than we were previously led to believe. How many things did they do while looking that exact age?
I suppose I can forgive them if they were, say, fifteen when they did the Batman Boy Scout thing, and they're like, eighteen or nineteen now. But for Yugi's sake. Characters in Yugioh used to look differenter than that at differenter ages!!!
Anyway, believe it or not I'm horribly amused, especially at the whole ninja scatter thing toward the beginning of the clip.
One of my biggest problems about the world that GX makes the YGO world into is that it legitimizes one of my oldest brother's* main complaints about the series as a whole-- that is, "Why the heck are they making such a damn big deal out of a card game?!"
In YGO:DM, it mostly makes sense, most of the time. In Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, they're in the midst of tournaments, both of which have enourmous stakes tied to them. In Noa's arc, it's like Noa is restricted to some sort of "game engine." During the Oriechalchos saga, the villains have a scary magical weapon they can use to FORCE people into dueling them. AFTER the Oriechalchos saga, it actually stops being so much about cards. (And the Grand Prix tournie is really just sort of a cool-down romp compared to Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, even WITH Zigfried von Shroeder hacking into KaibaCorp's computers.)
(And in YGO:TM, the card game was really mostly such a big deal because KAIBA IS INSANE. I know it, you know it, we all know it. Kaiba is not constrained by our definition of what is meaningful or meaningless because he's obsessed.)
In GX, there's some implication that there are tournaments in the big dueling leagues, but you could easily claim there aren't, because of Kaiser's depressive stage-- that is, he's mainly moping that his sponsors are leaving him, not that he's getting knocked out of tournaments left and right. This might make more sense if they had somehow made explicit that the tournaments worked on some sort of system that rewarded a high win rate instead of constant winning streaks, like professional football. Instead, they let you wonder about what exactly Kaiser talking about sponsors actually means-- and this, unfortunately, leaves open the path they seem to take for 5Ds.
I've mentioned that I enjoy 5Ds, but that doesn't mean I think it makes any sense. It's pretty clear there are no actual tournaments. Cards are treated as outright weapons, despite the fact that we have seen that nobody can summon the Seal of Oriechalchos and randomly steal souls. (And if it turns out they can, I will be distinctly annoyed.) Professional duelists don't seem to duel in tournaments at all-- show duels take place entirely due to challenges, and the living of a duelist is entirely dependant on their sponsorships. In fact, it's set up rather like professional boxing in the era of Mohammed Ali. Which is extremely wierd if you think about it too hard, which is what I'm given to doing. No matter how wrapped up in it you may get, there's still that little question of WHY? WHY does it make any sense for the police to force criminals into dueling them? WHY doesn't Yusei just whip out a pistol and shoot somebody? Why don't any of his opponents? They ARE supposedly criminals, are they not?
In DM, dueling did tend to take center stage. But regardless of how many times the Pointy Finger of Death tried to tell you otherwise, guns and other truly deadly weapons were a stark reality within that world. In the world of 5Ds, no matter how dystopian it may paint itself, the fact remains that the worst injury we've seen came about because Jack flipped over on his damn motorcycle. And he recovered from THAT pretty quickly, all things considered. (Invid wants to remind me of Goodwin's cybernetic arm. I say pfah-- that was magic.) The only people we've seen with significant ability to use magic involving cards are all signer-types. Thus, treating cards like a deadly weapon when dealing with the general populace, which does not contain a high number of signers, MAKES NO SENSE.
*When I speak of my oldest brother, incidentally, I do NOT speak of Invid. I have three brothers, and Invid is only one of them. My oldest brother is known best in the web-circles I run as "GAARDIAN," and is on an active mission to get me out of this fandom, which Invid is not. My youngest brother is younger than ME and is not known by anything on the internet, because he's only seven.
Yeah. I fell behind on some of these a little bit. OH WELL.
SO. On page 23, I drew the best Duke Devlin that I have ever drawn. Ever. Speaking of which, I was using the last few manga issues as reference for these pages, and I don't think even Takahashi is entirely sure how to draw the guy. His headband just kind of.... vanishes behind his bangs. Never to be seen again. I sacrificed accuracy to the character design so as to draw a headband I could believe existed.
Kids? Duke is a player. Serenity is not stupid. She's either very uncomfortable or insincere pretty much every time he's up in her face. Serenity knows Duke is a player.
Which is pretty much why I spit acid at the pairing. There are ways it could work, but to be quite honest I don't think Serenity would put up with it for very long. She's just too nice to tell him so and is hoping he'll eventually lose interest.
As I noted in the comments for page 24, this is pretty much Duke giving an honest opinion for once. I tend to think he mostly chases Serenity to agitate Tristan anyhow, but apparently with everything going on, he's gotten a little tired of Tristan denying that it bothers him. Or something. This is so in character I can't even puncture it in a way that makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about. (What can I say? I write more intuitively than anything.)
Yay for page 25! I used to ship those two, before I stopped shipping Kaiba/Ishizu. No, I seriously, seriously did. I can't even remember why. But I do know that any good story that considers romances seriously has to take into account all the relationships outside the romance, and this is an important one. Even more important, for the purposes of GD, than the relationship between Joey and Kaiba. Why? Because Mokuba loves his big brother desperately and wants him to be happy. I'll let you consider the implications of that on your own.
Red Eyes Plushie is awesome. He's also a little on the fat side, but that's because I was trying to consider the need for stuffings.
I don't actually have much to say about page 26 except that it was mucho fun to draw. XD
Small spoiler for page 27: Serenity is deliberately fooling herself. She knows perfectly well it was not Kaiba who would be so thoughtful as to give her such a gift, she knows perfectly well Mokuba's the considerate one.
She does not care. Right at this moment, she feels good, she knows that Mokuba is a potential avenue to spend more time in the vicinity of Kaiba anyway. And he's a nice kid.
I totally wiggle my butt like that when I'm happy. XD Picked it up from my cat.
The Ishizu of page 28 is not the best Ishizu I have ever drawn. But that's okay.
For some reason I find the line "after destiny comes paperwork" both hilarious and deeply profound.
Page 29 and page 30 make me happy for a number of reasons. For one thing, Pegasus feels completely in character. For another, he's gorgeous.
GORGEOUS.
XD
Check out that shading around where his left eye used to be. It terrifies me. I love it. XD
(I don't consider this bragging, because I often don't have a clue how I pull this sort of thing off.)
Also, it makes me happy because I love the pairing. Whoof. Perhaps essays on such matters will rear their over-emotional heads sooner or later.
Preview for the next set of pages!
Striped socks will be seen. Joey will get a most welcome break from hospital boredom. Serenity will give Kaiba a guilt trip without meaning to. Téa will do some reading. Serenity will "reconcile" with her father. (Not really.) And then Yugi will end Magic Light with some introspective narrative. :D On to the next story!
XD Yes, I know, twice in a row. When the comic updates more regularly there'll be more variety, promise.
Just really a few comments anyway: There was this very-likely-dubbed-in talk about Yusei being an insectophobe, and it was really funny because they'd all go "OMG YUSEI HE IS SO SCARED!" and Yusei was all "-_- what are you people talking about?!" (Not vocally, his facial expression said it.)
And Yusei quoted (paraphrased?) Yugi from the Panik episode of Duelist Kingdom, which was one of my favorite episodes from the Duel Monsters series. XDD He is Yugi's mindslave.
Also, whatta heck was up with the bully dude (Lenny)'s posse? Why the giggling man's hand no move?
So we finally saw the first (dubbed) episode of 5Ds, the dystopian-future-tron-duelingtron-Yu-Gi-Oh.
Yusei has Tristan's second voice. Which is awesome. It's also really funny that everyone calls him "Yuse." Like Joey's "Yuge" for Yugi but bizarrely more effeminate. (If we slashed them, Yusei would totally be Yugi's uke. XDDDD YES LITTLE YUGI. He'd be in his thirties or so by now, though, so it'd be weird.)
Riding dueling is now "Turbo Dueling," which I'm sure certain lucky folks knew already. All I gotta say is, "It sure sounds less stupid to be the Champion of Turbo Duels than the King of Riding Duels." That and less...........
Less sexually charged. :P
Speaking of which I'm kind of relieved at which song they ended up with. That's probably the least homoerotic one the kids could've voted for.
Little brother (who is seven) had a real problem with that, btw. He kept going "No, YUGI is the king!"
Yukai says he loves this series, which is no surprise.
Also, "Trudge," the cop who is actually Ushio (yes that Ushio) has Dan Green as a voice actor, which is absolutely hilarious because he sounds like a very cranky Atem.
And my final part of this post is actually a wonderful SKIT regarding the opinion I've had of "riding duels" ever since they announced the idea:
Kira: So it's actually a format of Duel Monsters that encourages driving recklessly?
Yukai: Yeah. Doesn't it ROCK?
Oi. I'm going to have a time keeping him in line from here on out.
Final analysis? Better than GX. Still not counting it in my continuity regarding YnY because GX messes like hell with the timelines and continuity and 5Ds supposedly takes place in its universe.
That and it's way too close to YnY's actual time period for that to work. XD
On the virtues of the dub names versus calling everyone their original names:
As readers of this blog may have noticed, those of us working on YnY follow what is best described as a "mixed canon," taking tidbits from not only both the manga and anime but also picking and choosing from the Japanese and English language versions of the anime.
Most significantly, we use the dub names but mostly adhere to the Japanese timeline and ages.
I am aware that many anime purists regard the preferential use of dub names as utter blasphemy, perhaps the highest form of it. I also don't give a damn, because my reasons for using the dub names are as perfectly acceptable as the reason my family uses a slightly different surname than the one we would have used in Denmark.
1. Dub names, when done well, make unusual characters more accessable to a different language audiance. When I say "done well," I mean the characters are renamed things like "Téa" (a slightly exotic but pretty and pronounceable Spanish name) or "Joseph" (a biblical name that doesn't interfere with the wordplay involved with the word Yu-Jyo) instead of the slew of weird, distinctly British names that were given to all the GX characters with American accents (except for Jesse and his southern drawl.)
2. A lot of the names Kazuki Takahashi gave characters were, quite frankly, weird. I'm not even talking about the Japanese characters. Be honest, can you imagine any sane, supposedly "respectable" American businessman naming his son "Pegasus?" "James," certainly. "Maximillion" is still a bit unusual, but it's believable. And it still gives similar connotations to what I suspect Takahashi had been going for in the first place. Don't even get me started on "Cyndia" and "Cadeline." Those are supposed to be "Cynthia" and "Catherine," and you all know it, bastards.
3. No English speakers I know but me have penetrated the deeper meaning of the name "Mai Kujaku." "Mai Valentine" may be punny, but none of us had to look at plant catalogues to get the joke. ("Mai Kujaku," or rather, "Kujaku Mai," refers to a breed of sakura tree, if I remember right. It actually has nothing to do with peacocks at all.)
4. The odd mixture of Japanese and non-Japanese names adds a multi-ethnic flavor to the culture of the series that I happen to like very much.
5. Roger Slifer was a producer of the 80's Transformers series. Anyone who helped bring that monstrosity to the attention of the world at large has earned getting a God Card named after him.
6. Because Duke Devlin just sounds way cooler than Otogi whatever-it-was. And more Irish. You have to love the Irish.
7. Changing names of characters is a time honored tradition that predates the Roman Empire. So is changing names of people when they move somewhere new, and it's a related issue.
8. Because "Honda Hiroto" sounds like a car to American ears. (E.g., to mine.)
9. Because BELIEVE IT OR NOT, they dropped a lot of the original names I hate and kept most of the ones I like. Except Kujaku, because I do like that word. But I deal with it because they needed to keep a joke in there that viewers would understand.
10. Because I'm a prick, that's why.
I admit it: listening to people whine about dub names when they should be complaining about fundamental changes to story or to characters, like making Rebecca more impressive by youthening her or making Kaiba less impressive (and somewhat nonsensical) by aging him, or complaining about inconsistent dubbing, a real problem in YGO, really bores and irritates me.
(Kaiba is made nonsensical by aging because, if he were REALLY eighteen, what's he doing in Yugi-the-fifteen-year-old's homeroom? That would imply that the great CEO of KaibaCorp has been held back in his classes, multiple times, making his status as a high school student and businessman not just unusual but bizarre.)
Incedentally, some interesting tidbits on dub name meanings:
"Téa," so far as I could tell, means "princess." It is also the name of Téa Leoni, who costarred in the movie "Spanglish," which I would say pretty much verifies its authenticity as a name.
"Joseph," as I noted, is biblical, and it means "God will multiply." This has nothing to do with my decision to give him five children, I swear.
I couldn't trace "Tristan" exactly, but it seems to be a form of "Tristram," which means "sorrow" and was the name of a knight in an old story who was torn between two women.
All the surnames of those particular characters are English and refer to occupations, as if they were following a deliberate theme when renaming Yugi's support group.
It's pretty obvious what "Duke" means, but "Devlin" is a Gaelic name that means "fierce." Rocking.
There was a kid named Underwood in my high school. I can't say I ever met him.
"Odion" means "born of twins." There are several Egyptian names that the book I found it in claims mean "born of twins," and no matter how many times I see it, the meaning of the phrase "born of twins" continues to mystify me. (His name was probably changed on account of being too distinctly Arabic.)
"Maximillion" means "the greatest."
"Cecilia" means "blind." 8X
"Alister" apparently refers to a name rather big in the occult-- It is also a form of "Alexander" and means "defender of man." His name was probably changed because the name "Amelda" is stupid. And doesn't mean anything. At all.
"Solomon" is also a biblical name, associated with the wisest mortal found in the Book, and means "peaceful."
"Serenity" and "Shizuka" apparently mean approximately the same thing, which means it was just another example of the dubbers trying to make the series more accessable to an english speaking audience.
"Mai" may be her name in Japanese as well, but it is also a Native American name that means "Coyote," a Scottish form of Margaret (which means "pearl"), and can be taken as a form of "Mary," which means "bitter." In Japanese, "Mai" means "Dance," which means that "Kujaku Mai" translates literally into "Peacock Dance." "Valentine" of course was chosen for its connotations of romance, and the "my valentine" pun, but it's actually a Latin name that means "valiant." Pretty much all of these name meanings can be taken to apply to the character, which is weirdly cool.
Approximately half of the characters in the YGO:DM dub (That's the one most of us Americans think of as Yu-Gi-Oh!) either kept some form of their original names or their dub names refer to their original names. A good majority of the ones that got their names changed have easily divined reasons the names did change. (Lip flap, lingual jokes, accessibility, and the horror of listening to American VAs mispronounce Sogakoru, which I am quite confident I have misspelled.)
In fact, it's easier to explain why the names that got changed got changed than it is to explain why Seto and Mokuba Kaiba's names didn't change! (I figure they kept them because they were cool. And, you know, they couldn't very well change the title character's name without changing the name of the show, and maybe they didn't want poor Yugi to stand alone in the Japanese name department. XD)
Approximate age: (by the Japanese anime) Fifteen to seventeen. Character Archetype: The Cute/Little Sidekick, twisted into the hero's role. Probable Element and Alignment: Dark, Chaotic Good Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: He says "Yup!" a LOT.
Yugi is, as anyone who knows me well enough to hear about my childhood knows, a particularly personal character for me. He is small yet unusual enough to attract attention, shy but incapable of fading into the background, gentle and innocent yet not so naiive as people would believe. He is very smart but doesn't do as well in school as he probably could if he simply applied himself (this is a curiously American trait; one wonders how the Japanese Yugi picked it up.) He has mostly been raised by his mother and grandfather; his father is largely absent due to work obligations. Yugi has developed a healthy respect for the storytelling tradition, as he has grown up metaphorically at his grandfather's knee, listening attentively enough to random dueling advice and stories to be able to recall important tidbits while under pressure. (Exodia)
The story of Yu-Gi-Oh! can be seen as his coming of age story. Atem may act as the Superman to his Clark through much of it, but Yugi first solved the puzzle after standing up for the first time to one of the many bullies that once made his school days a living horror. (Yugi before the Puzzle was rather typical bully fodder: just odd enough to attract attention, an easy target, someone who buried himself in his hobbies and was liveliest at home with familiar people.) By the end of it, no matter what canon you may follow, Yugi had to prove that he was capable of standing on his own two legs before Atem could lay down his sword, and he does. He has gone through plenty of major events, Atem or no Atem, to do so.
One of my absolute favorite things about Yugi is his non-judgmental acceptance of everyone, even after he has delivered them well-deserved kicks to head (or Atem has) so long as they realize what the kick in the head was FOR. Sometimes these "kicks in the head" aren't so much punishments delivered as they are simple displays of mettle: all Joey needed was for Yugi to prove he gave a damn. (Same applies to Tristan.) He's not silly about his acceptance-- when Kaiba does something wrong, Yugi will still call him on it. But no matter what Kaiba does, Yugi will forgive and forget. The matter is dropped. It will not be brought up unless forced. (Yugi's rather Christ-like that way.) He might regard the other person with a certain amount of suspicion the next he sees them, but it's the suspicion afforded a dog known for biting. There is no hatred.
That last paragraph covers what I tend to think Shadi meant when he called Yugi a soul of purity and innocence. This is a common misconception regarding the character, and a common misconception regarding the meaning of purity and innocence.
A person's purity and innocence has nothing to do with their sexuality at all. Being a virgin does not make one pure, it makes one a virgin. I know plenty of people who are or were perverts at the same time as being virgins. (Myself included.) Regardless of what sexuality you may regard Yugi Moto as being, he is a sexual being. He gets territorial about Téa, borrows pornography from Joey, knows exactly what Mai is trying to do when she grabs his hands and is appropriately abashed when pressed into Vivian's chest. (Freaking out over Vivian smashing his face into her mammaries is not the reaction of a sexually naiive person-- it is the reaction of any normal person who is attracted to people with boobs, and possibly any normal person who considers boobs sexual in any way. That scene says more about Vivian than it does about Yugi.) Even losing his virginity in the course of the series probably would not have deprived him of this stellar review on his soul's cleanliness.
Yugi typically has simple desires, despite being a complex person, and it's not difficult for him to achieve personal happiness, a healthy way to be. Unfortunately acheiving his desires is not always easy: His basic, most fundamental desire after hamburgers and strategy games is for the people around him to be happy and healthy.
This desire is probably the root of his willingness to follow destiny when it calls, and to help his friends when they need him. He wants to be relied on, and he knows that someone has to do it, so he steps up. I tend to think that his willingness to be a hero, mostly eschewing the glamorous bits and happily doing the hard parts with only the occasional complaint, is an expression of the boundless love he has for everyone around him.
Yugi has probably one main frustration, and that is that he is constantly underestimated or mistaken for much younger than he really is (this even happens in the fandom, after multiple jokes are made about it and he is shown as being in High School in all the media he's found himself in.) This is also the root of his being an easy target, as he is also typically a shy person at the beginning of the series (gentle souls forced into mixed company often are by nature). If he had been Joey's height, or Tristan's (Tristan is the tallest of the main characters in the series), people probably would have left him alone in the corner after failing to coax some appropriate reaction out of him, and he'd have been described as "creepy" as well as "gloomy." Instead, he got run over. Joey calls him "girly" and many others who underestimate him gravitiate towards calling him wimpy. It is not easy in a teenager's world to be shy AND short.
As a dynamic character, however, Yugi eventually overcomes this obstacle with Atem's help. Rest assured that in the end he will be just as much a master of acting four feet taller than he is in reality as Atem was. (I'm fairly convinced he's more physically developed by the end of the series anyway.)
Yugi is also often underestimated by the fandom because, even when he's not being shy, he's just kind of quiet and lets Joey take the lead in social situations. I just think it's out of his nature to be overbearing, and that he's much more of an anime sidekick-type compared to Joey, who is more like the typical anime hero (more on this in Joey's study, of course.)
Rather obviously, Yugi's something of a nerd. He likes to concern himself with little complicated things that take a lot of concentration, like models or (ahem) puzzles. While his hair might not be a proper indication (considering it seems to be hereditary), he seems to be something of a punk as well, and if he were an American I would suggest he listens to such bands as Black Sabbath and Marilyn Manson. (We shall rely more on the fact that Atem even could find a collar and crazy belts to cover him with at such short notice. That and on the fact that he was described by a fellow wallnerd as "gloomy.") Considering Kazuki Takahashi's favorite American comic is Hellboy (so stated in an interview), and the way rock music has infused itself into the Japanese consciousness, such suggestions for his choice of music are still perfectly feasable.
There is one more important aspect to Yugi's character this essay would be woefully incomplete without: Yugi is an anchor in a storm. If it weren't for Yugi, his friends wouldn't even be friends with each other. Some of them wouldn't be friends with themselves. Once he has developed more confidence in himself, he becomes the friend his friends turn to when they need stability, and that includes Mokuba and Seto Kaiba and yes, Atem himself. Yugi becomes Atem's sanity, in fact, just as Atem becomes his teacher and guiding force. Because of his gentle and accepting nature, Yugi improves the self-worth of people just by interacting with them.
Final Distillation: Yugi is a friend to all and a kind, loving soul, but he is not a fool. He does not hate, despite the wounds he's suffered. He is very easy to underestimate. He is a dynamic character, changing throughout the story. He is easy to please. He is brilliant but not intense. He does things because they need to be done. He pulls people together.
Feel free to comment on this and tell me whether you feel I've left something important out, or if you think I'm completely off base, or even if you agree with me. Comments can be made through email or right here, since I do believe anon-comments are enabled.
I would likely not be so bold as to write as extensive fanworks as Yukai no Yugi or Game of Dreams if I did not feel I have a certain level of intimate knowledge into the characters at my disposal. (One can always tell when I've been reading Sherlock Holmes; my writing will probably carry a peculiarly Victorian flavor for the next few hours at least.)
I have never felt the need before to collect my understandings and interpretations of the characters into essay form, as it has always been all in my head. But I've noticed that I really enjoy talking about these aspects of character in forums, and that I enjoy sharing them even more. Invid has something he does called "Character Distillation," in which he strips the character down to his or her most fundamental aspects. I am concerned just as much with silly minutia, however, as I feel that these tiny quirks are what truly give a character personality, serving to humanize these fictional beings as much as possible.
Of course, we all take our own experiences and outlooks to the table, and so my understandings of these people will be different from that of not only the random fangirl or boy of DeviantArt or ff.net, but from their creator. There is nothing wrong with this so long as they come across as being like themselves in the final cut.
And so I give you: GDG's Character Studies.
A few notes on format:
While a character's age does not dicate how they will act, it does influence it, something the people who write Ninja Turtles seem to keep forgetting.
"Character Archetypes" aren't really ones you'll be likely to find in Campbell's studies of the subject, but rather are common anime character types mixed with common "Western" ones. While Japan's megamythical character set overlaps with that of the rest of the world, there are some interesting differences, and Yu-Gi-Oh! freely employs influences from both cultural universes. (It also happily employs characters of certain types in roles they rarely get to occupy.)
"Probable Element and Alignment" is sort of a weirdly mixed marker because the Alignments follow, mostly, D&D rules, while I think the elements tend to follow rules I sort of made up using the card game and the series. XD "Dark" people are more likely to be calm, smooth and collected, "light" people are more intense and hyperactive.
Vocal quirks are important when trying to achieve a character's "voice." See more about this at Invid's blog.
Final Distillation is for anyone too lazy to read the entire essay, but at the end so that hopefully you'll accidentally notice something that interests you. I'll try to keep these brief summaries.
In Page 19, Tristan comes to an interesting realization-- and Yugi shows signs of having known the same thing all along.
Like I've said before, I think of Yugi and Joey as being two of the only people in the entire series who understand Kaiba on any level.
Also, I think it's cute that Yugi apologizes for "yelling" at Tristan when most of us would have called it "stern telling off that Tristan needed."
I don't have that much to say about page 20 except that for some reason, adding lines around Serenity made the first panel much more dynamic, and that I like the effect that adding a gradient over the entire page had on the feel of the page.
I love page 21. I think it's the best page in this sequence, because of how well it shows the dynamics between the two characters (and because of how pokeable Yugi is in the first panel.)
Poke him! Poke him I say!
Also, this is the second time I've made a joke about drugs in this fancomic. There must be something wrong with me.
Of course, page 22 is good for interaction too, and I like it in part because it lets Joey's more vulnerable side out (a side of him I don't go into very often).
"Were you aware my sister has a crush on Kaiba?" is Joey's way of changing the subject to Kaiba without seeming like he actually gives a care about Kaiba (even though he does-- as I noted before he pretends to be unconscious whilst Kaiba is apologizing for Kaiba's benefit).
XD Joey thinks Kaiba is funny. Clueless, and funny.
This scene was a bit harder on me because I had very specific things in mind and it didn't always pan out quite right. I am pleased anyhow, though.
That doctor Téa asked for directions is totally Sephiroth. I don't know why I'm so convinced of this.
I love Téa. XD This scene was mildly inspired by several humorous scenes actually in the series, incedentally: Téa rubs her shoulders when she has to use the bathroom (Duelist Kingdom), Téa comes up with pretty decent lies when she wants out of a situation (Battle City), Bakura shows up in weird places (all the time.) I actually tend to think that, since Bakura has been shown to be very attractive to teenage girls (shown? HA!) he probably has spent enough time with them to know where a woman will probably go in a public place when she needs to be alone.
Also, it was important to me that I show some of Bakura's "real" personality showing through. He seems fairly sensitive and empathic, and without Yami Bakura giving him all those blackouts anymore I'd think he'd be more likely to take his own initiatives, too, especially with those people who stuck with him despite his being possessed by an elder god thing.
I tend to think that all this time, Yugi's suspected this but pushed it aside because he didn't want to think he was competing with Atem. (His love/lust for Téa is canon, it's pointless to argue about it because Takahashi even talks about them getting married. XD)
Also, you can practically hear his poor little heart shatter into pieces and crash all over the floor in this scene. :(
Yes, Bakura sees him and isn't telling Téa. Would you? Be honest.
For some reason I seem to like scenes with Yugi accidentally overhearing things. In half my unfinished plot bunnies there's a scene where Yugi accidentally overhears a heavy conversation. He's overheard everything from "I was in love" to "why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" XDD
In page eighteen, Téa shows that she has Yugi's personality down. Also, the line "I thought I was done" is a reference to the fact that I don't think Téa can let this go so easily. She thought she was prepared. She thought she was finished, but she's not. In a way, I drew from my own grieving experiences for this.
I have one more panel I want to comment on:
First of all, I was listening to "Sonne" whilst inking this page, which is really just hilarious when you think about it.
Secondly, this particular line inspired this slightly slashy piece on my main deviantart:
Darnit, this is the wrong computer to upload an "appropriate" image from to head the blog off with. Oh well, we can edit it later. XD
There's no way to keep everybody happy when it comes to pairings. Some people only like a fic when all the pairings are "totally and undeniably canon," whatever that means, while others can't stand anything resembling canon pairings and will only read a fic if Weevil is paired up with Princess Adina from the VR episodes right after Duelist Kingdom (or something equally WTF.)
And then, of course, there's the people who can't stand slash ("gay" pairings) and the people who can't live without it.
This is a nexgen. GDG and Invid (the authors) are both very creeped out by MPreg. Therefore, there will be little actual slash to speak of between canon characters.
That doesn't mean either of us really has anything against slash. Invid doesn't like sex in his fic fare at ALL, and GDG is bisexual. All sexual relationships in YnY and Game of Dreams will not so much be shown as hinted at (sometimes very, very strongly.) We believe that, for the purpose of this story, less is more.
There will be hints of pairings that don't actually end up happening in the long run. The driving force of Game of Dreams is mainly to get everybody together that are parents of main characters of YnY. After that, pairings won't be quite as central, despite the fact that Yukai's sexual orientation seems to be Kaiba's daughter. (If you've read the preboot, you know this already. It's not a spoiler.) But slash will rear its crack-dazed head more than once in both YnY and GD, occasionally humorously, sometimes as nothing more than a whisper, and possibly for real at least once.
But I refuse to limit any two characters by keeping them solely to each other. Yes, Kira Kaiba is Serenity's daughter and GD needs to explain how a heck that happened. But Kaiba's relationship with Joey plays a major role in that, as does Serenity's relationship with Joey. Even Mai's relationship with Joey. And the same goes for other relationships that exist in this fancomic, up to and including relationships with dead characters.
Game of Dreams is not a romance about any one pairing. It's about a web of relationships both romantic and otherwise. And YnY isn't really a romance at all. It's about a father-son relationship (and about one of the most entertaining characters I've ever devised, including my original works.)
One of the reasons I arrived at some of the pairings I use, in fact, is the fact that they create very interesting relationships between the main Yukai no Yugi cast. If, for example, Joey and Kaiba ended up together instead of Serenity and Kaiba, then not only would Yukai not be all weird about Kaiba's daughter (as opposed to Kaiba's niece, which mightn't be so charged), but Kira and Ken (Joey's oldest son) wouldn't be cousins and wouldn't act like siblings. I find the fact that Kaiba and Joey's kids act like brothers and sisters to be much more interesting than an uneasy friendship or fullblown rivalry would be.
If something having to do with pairings disappoints or upsets you, I apologize. Go over the Golden-Dragon-Girl account at DeviantArt (or email at yukaimotou@gmail.com) and send me notes demanding your slashcrack there. Or your hetcrack. Or your Weevil/Adina crack. It might not work, but then again it might. But don't knock YnY for something you dislike about the canon character pairings. You'll deprive yourself of all the crazy slashy jokes we start making about three (four? five? something like that) chapters in.
So right now we're working on the first part of Game of Dreams, which is the prologue to Yukai no Yugi and'll be in seven parts (The number of times I've written that....)
Thus far there are fifteen pages but they'll all be linked in the cover comments by the time it's done.
Now for "indepth commentary", I suppose. If you haven't read the fifteen pages yet, it'd be better to do so now.
I worry I'm going to be accused of overdoing the drama here. The first page narration only barely manages to not be overwrought, although most people seem to not care about the first page much even though I was mostly very pleased with it. XD
Is it wrong that I'm amused that the grand majority of the comments, including my own, on page two, go along the lines of "No, Joey!!" We all sound like Serenity or something. (I would post a video of Serenity yelling "No, Joey!!" but I can't find it on Yuutube and I can't remember the episode number. XDDD)
I don't remember why Yugi was in the shower in his first scene. I think I just wanted something for him to be doing. ^_^; Which means, natch, that I'm a pervert, because that was the first thing I thought of. Also I admit to being pleased with how he looks in most of his scenes; I have trouble drawing big-eyed Yugi because apparently "cute" just isn't programmed into my style or something. >D (I LIE?)
One of the important things I tried (and possibly failed) to get across in these pages is the fact that Yugi understands Kaiba-- and Téa and Tristan do not. In fact I tend to think that, other than Mokuba, Yugi and Joey (yes, Joey too) are the only people who really understand Kaiba in any way. Which is part of something he comes to realize in the background. And Yugi considers Kaiba a friend, which is why he so insistently tells him not to worry, Yugi will take care of things.
That's also why Yugi keeps asking Kaiba if he's okay. XD
It's not very clear, but Kaiba actually helped to lift Joey off the front of the car, and has blood on his clothes. That's what he's burning in a garbage can on page seven. He talks about self-therapy because his doctor has him on some medication to mitigate such obsessive compulsive behavior, and being Kaiba, he's ticked off by the idea that he'd need to take medication for something like that. I don't know WHEN he started to take the medication, but I suspect it started right after Duelist Kingdom, and that he stopped taking it at some point before or during the Doom arc, because he was convinced it was causing hallucinations. During the Doom arc he realized that it couldn't possibly be the medication causing him to see things, so he's going back on it as a trial run. XD This theory, obviously, only holds up in the dub.
If you don't follow the dub continuity then just assume he started taking it some time in the undefined past, I'm mostly joking anyway.
In page eight's dream sequence, I'm mainly referencing a line from the manga right after Death T; in which Mokuba says that his and Seto's father died "in an accident" when Mokuba was three. I strongly suspect this of being a car accident. I have not seen anything to refute or contradict this suspicion within anything canon. I'm writing under the assumption that it WAS a car accident because that makes the impact of the accident with Joey more personal.
Do note the bandaid on little Seto's cheek.
In case nobody was aware, Kaiba sleeping in means there is something VERY WRONGTM. Thus Moku-chan's concern. (I've only seen him asleep when he was actually either knocked unconscious, soulless, or both. Heee.)
In page 10, I wanted to imply (from Yugi's expression) that Tristan has been bitterly harping on this line several times already. Also, Yugi sounds like Atem (which as I note in the comment will be gone into) and Téa's just like OMG. 8O Notice her posture in the last panel, if you aren't too distracted by the evil shadow trying to eat Seto's shoulders.
If it isn't clear in the next page from the positioning of characters, Serenity is going in one direction (after Kaiba, in the direction of Joey's room) while Téa is running in the opposite, the direction Kaiba came from. One of the things that will be set up in this story arc is a sudden drift between Yugi and Téa. There were things that happened in the main anime and manga that I was unsatisfied with the resolution of, in this case, Téa's mourning of Atem. She was in love with him (so sayeth the manga outright), and being someone who's been in love with people I can't have, this is something I want to see real development and human behavior in, because I've been there.
In pages 12-15, I mostly wanted to lay the groundworks for my version of Silentshipping. I'll admit it. Anyone who's looked at the character sheets for YnY proper know that this story has Silentshipping in it. Basically, I have several things here to say about the pairing itself and how I write it:
1. Kaiba's relationship with Joey is vital to this pairing. I have committed Puppyshipping for its own sake before, but it's also very important to Silentshipping because Joey is the most important man in Serenity's life, and because in canon, I often read Joey and Seto's relationship as being love/hate/twisted fraternal. On whatever level, Kaiba cares about what happens to Joey by the end of the series, and what's happened hurts.
2. I am perfectly aware that he has no idea who she is. That's what makes page 13's second and third panels so awesome. XD
3. Yes, Serenity is crushing on him. In the VR Noa arc, during Kaiba vs. Jinzo, you can see her clapping insanely when he makes a spectacular move. She does that for Joey, but I somehow doubt she does it for Yugi. (chuckles) She blushes badly when she has to talk to him in the blimp arc, obviously screwing up all her courage. At the very least Serenity finds Kaiba both exciting and intimidating.
4. Serenity is the second person in fifteen pages to ask Seto if he's okay.
Other subjects of note in this scene include that Joey is listening to the entire conversation, is only pretending to be asleep to spare Kaiba the humiliation, that Kaiba is desperately trying to assauge his guilt, and that Kaiba is making the mistake of assuming that not being hurt means he's got no right to be upset. Also, Serenity is annoyed that Kaiba remembers Mai and not her.
Asj and I had a short discussion about how Kaiba would have referred to Serenity if he had seen her duel.
~AsjJohnson Hmm... Serenity should realize that Mai's a duelist and she's not. I do wonder what may have happened if Kaiba was there to see that duel she was forced into... O_o No wait, that would be a bad idea because Serenity was all whiny. ^_^" Perhaps if he saw near the end... I think Serenity got it together at the end, if I remember right... Then Kaiba would think of her as "Virtuous, mahogany-haired, Saint-Joan girl" (... that is the name of the card, right? >_>" I think it was...) Heh. First I was going to say "cute" instead of "virtuous", but I couldn't picture Kaiba using that word - even if I meant it as "short and child-like, like Mokuba". ^_^"
--~Yukai-no-Yugi XD Yeah, I was kind of dissappointed I didn't have enough room to write "Well NOW I know how to get his attention..." next to Serenity's head there.
Saint Joan, yeah. Virtuous doesn't really sound like him either, though, maybe just "short" or "bubbly?" XD And he'd probably say "redhead" because it's shorter. Hee. -- ~AsjJohnson Hmm... Well, I guess I can't argue about Serenity having brown instead of red hair anymore ^_^", because I'm pretty sure I've heard Ichigo from Bleach being referred to as having red or orange hair - and I'm still confused about that, when it's definitely blond... v_v (pretends to compare Ichigo and Ed) Ed's blond hair is oranger than Ichigo's orange hair.Anyhow... Um... was there enough room to say "I need to become a duelist"?I basically decided on "virtuous" because Kaiba says Serenity's a virtue name. ^_^" Perhaps Kaiba could just call her "Mutt-sister"? Seems more appropriate at the moment, since he didn't see her dueling. (tries to keep from laughing as I picture Kaiba calling her "virtuous Mutt-Sister" - and then tries very hard not to laugh as I picture Serenity's look, which is similar to panel seven except that she's smirking darkly as she considers how to kill him.)
-- ~Yukai-no-Yugi I actually thought of writing that AFTER I had already written OMG, so no, sadly, there wasn't. (Sigh! XD) Pfa ha ha ha ha! "Virtuous Mutt-sister." XDDDD Darn you, now I've got it in my head too! X33
(Serenity: DX Keel yuuu!!
Kaiba: What? What'd I say?)
Nah, if he did that he would have said something about Mai having a corny name.
XD If I have something wrong with me, I don't care, because I have more fun this way.
Speaking of that duel, I actually think it shows Serenity to have prodigious talent when she calms down.
And then Joey ruins the moment by letting Serenity know he's awake. Take note of his expression in the largest panel of page 15. I applaud Serenity for not losing her cool the entire scene, though.
Right now there are four and a half pages in production; three are scanned and cleaned but not shrunk.
This has basically been set up for behind the scenes blah about this fancomic right here. It'll probably turn into a dumping ground for things about Yu-Gi-Oh in general, too, knowing me.
Kids? Duke is a player. Serenity is not stupid. She's either very uncomfortable or insincere pretty much every time he's up in her face. Serenity knows Duke is a player.
Red Eyes Plushie is awesome. He's also a little on the fat side, but that's because I was trying to consider the need for stuffings.
GORGEOUS.
XD Joey thinks Kaiba is funny. Clueless, and funny.
I love Téa. XD This scene was mildly inspired by several humorous scenes actually in the series, incedentally: Téa rubs her shoulders when she has to use the bathroom (Duelist Kingdom), Téa comes up with pretty decent lies when she wants out of a situation (Battle City), Bakura shows up in weird places (all the time.) I actually tend to think that, since Bakura has been shown to be very attractive to teenage girls (shown? HA!) he probably has spent enough time with them to know where a woman will probably go in a public place when she needs to be alone.
