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.
First up, naturally, is Yugi. X3
