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.
