Character Study: Mai Valentine
Approximate Age: (by the Japanese anime) Twenty-three to Twenty-four
Character Archetype: The Femme Fatale crossed with the Good Goddess, seasoned with a touch of Mentor.
Probable Element and Alignment: Wind/Air, swings between Chaotic Good and Evil.
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: She's overly familiar, and is very outspoken.
Mai is another one of those characters who is much deeper than the casual fan gives her credit for (If I find another reference to her being an anime Paris Hilton, or any other vapidly chosen blonde flavor of the month... Raar. I may have to start injuring people.) Most fans find her very hard to hate, even when they don't want her to "steal" Joey. It's possible that she's just the kind of female character that American audiences have an easier time accepting-- while highly atypical of such, she's an obviously feministic character. She's also someone who's been around the block a few times, and spends most of the series wrestling with old scars.
Mai got out into the world at a fairly young age; according to the Japanese, she was orphaned, while the dub implies that she was neglected and says that her parents were never home. This is one of the few times I prefer and defer to the dub version of a backstory: beyond Mai making for one too many orphans in the cast, her frivolous behavior in Duelist Kingdom reminds me of a person whose parents tried to buy her affections, and that shot of a little girl alone at a window late at night doesn't seem at all like an orphanage setting to me. (An orphanage would have had a strict curfew. And probably wouldn't have been a mansion.) At any rate, Mai seems to have ended up on her own as soon as she was an adult, possibly younger, either because of "unfriendly" caregivers dumping her out as soon as they could, or because she was desperate to get out of an enormous empty house.
In order to support herself, Mai seems to have chosen a path that required wit and wiles: she becomes a house gambler on a casino ship of some kind. Whether she took this path because she was working with what she had in brains or in beauty is impossible to tell, but it would have forced her to become good at manipulating people, and fast.
I tend to suspect that if Mai had any friends at this point, they would have been other casino bunnies taking her under their wing, because of Mai's consistent behavior with the younger female members of the cast: despite having reason to fight with Téa, she was kind and offered advice, while Serenity was quickly under her wing and stayed there. I think that Mai sees this as the thing women do for each other: they protect and help one another, and if they have to, they beat a little toughness into each other. Mai doesn't believe in deep friendship at her first appearance, but she does believe in Sisterhood. (One wonders if, in Serenity, Mai saw a little bit of the scared girl she used to be. She definitely likes Serenity very well, regardless.)
As for the men, Mai clearly found them generally disappointing. She probably had good reason to, as well- there were surely other Jean Claude Magnums back there, all egotistical and shallow, crazy in their own ways. At a casino, regardless of whether she was in a place where gambling was legal, shady characters would have skirted the edge of Mai's life on a regular basis. So not only were the men shallow and annoying, they were probably often dangerous, and there was no way of telling who was and who wasn't. Little wonder that Mai would be constantly on guard, moving among people like this.
Once she got out of the casino, there's some indication that Mai then dueled in some less "family friendly" tournaments, making enough money to live comfortably and shining enough to attract the attention of I2's talent scouts for Duelist Kingdom. I highly doubt that Mai started as a Duelist: she's the same age as Pegasus, probably was in the casino before he got Duel Monsters off the ground (might have been out on her own before Pegasus even aquired the Millenium Eye) and probably picked up Duel Monsters later because it struck her as more challenging and interesting. I don't know if she started the game before or after leaving the casino, or if it was a catalyst for her being able to get out of the casino. I doubt that it matters much outside of speculative fanfiction. In any case, at this point the game is just that; a game that happens to rake in enough money for her to exploit it. If it means anything deeper to Mai, she hasn't realized it yet. It would have been during this time period that she met and shot down Jean Claude.
Thus we come to Duelist Kingdom. Mai is a hardened warrior in many ways now, clever, tough and dangerous. But I wouldn't say she's all the way grown up. In a lot of ways, especially socially, she's still that little girl standing alone by the window in the middle of the night. Yugi and company are the most sane and decent people she's been thrown in with in a long time, and she's not entirely sure what to make of them.
She's puzzled at how Joey treats her, perplexed that Yugi can be both gentle and strong enough to stand up for both himself and other people, and shaken, because she didn't really believe that decent people exist. She also realizes for the first time, when Joey beats her, that yes, she IS proud of her dueling skills, dammit, and yes, this game does mean something to her! (We never hear of her cheating after dueling Joey, so it's possible she's decided that cheating at the game means she's treating it too frivolously.) And when Yugi helps her, he helps her out of the simple compassion out of his own heart, and Mai is stunned. How, she wonders, can people be this way? How could someone like this even survive?
Mai says it herself: Nobody's done anything for her like what Yugi does by dueling Panik on her behalf. Nobody's ever potentially risked his life for her, and nobody's ever done anything out of simply caring about what happens to her. Mai has eight star chips the evening of the first day, and Yugi wins them back for her. She could have easily been in the castle before noon of the next day, and the old Mai would have been waiting for them with a smug grin and a flirtatiously unsettling wave. But the new Mai doesn't even arrive at the castle until the sky is starting to go scarlet: She spent the entire day getting eight star chips she didn't need, not even knowing that Yugi would potentially need them himself. Moreover, she also earned herself two more stars, meaning that Mai could have been in the castle the first night, if she'd only worked hard enough. She goes to quite a bit of trouble to repay her debt, and turns her matronly "tough love" on Yugi in the meantime. (She's been turning it on Téa since Day 1; it's actually during their duel together that Mai realizes that Téa is plenty tough and really doesn't need Mai's wing.)
So Mai is maturing into a more rounded person, taking what she already knows about tough love and learning how to tell when someone deserves it, and combining that with the new generosity of spirit that Yugi has shown her. (How far she's yet willing to go, we don't really know; after all, she didn't need the entry card she gave Joey anymore, but what it represented to her was still pretty powerful.)
Something that makes Mai already more mature than most of the cast is that she knows when to quit. Mai is one of maybe two characters to surrender in a duel, and the first that we see. She knows Yugi has her outmatched, she knows that she's been drawn into an inevitable checkmate by someone she can accept as a spectacular duelist, one she "can't even keep up with on the sidelines." And instead of pitching a fit or swearing revenge, like at least half of Yugi's other opponents, Mai cedes the duel. This could be a sign of new maturity, but I think it's a facet of maturity that Mai already brought to the tournament. Yugi has also treated her with respect she's rarely gotten from a man, and Mai returns it with interest. (So, okay, she might not have surrendered like that to any other man, but I doubt she would have needed to. I mean, really.)
During the first VR arc, Mai seems more comfortable than during Duelist Kingdom, possibly because being part of an active team is something she finds appealing. She instantly agrees to help, both showing her continuing gratitude and the fact that it's Not Okay with her if her bosses start kidnapping teenagers. (That would be Seto, btw.) Mai is very kind to Mokuba, displaying none of her usual animosity or guile toward males she's not familiar with; this is probably because Mokuba is a child, and one that she knows has already been through quite a lot. Mai is downright maternal with Mokuba (who doesn't seem to quite realize.) She treats Yugi as a friend and equal, and the two admire their new outfits together. (XDDD)
And last but not least, she's all over Joey in these episodes. She jokes that Joey isn't noticing the "real woman" right next to him when Joey charges after Adina. She even hugs him enthusiastically, jumping on the poor boy when he's half naked in a bearskin (no wonder Joey freaks out, when I say it like THAT. XD) And she's so inflamed with rage, passion and pain when Joey "dies," that she charges in completely without thinking, which is absolutely nothing like Mai.
Mai during Battle City is slightly more guarded again. She's back into her Tournie Mode, and though she seems to have been keeping out of her old circles, she doesn't waste time any more than she did in Duelist Kingdom. She was probably on her way to the Finals location even when she almost ran over Duke and Serenity. (Either that, or she was looking for Joey and Yugi, intent on giving them a ride because she knew they'd need one. Which is an entertaining thought.) A lot of what we get on Mai here is backstory, and the fact that Mai is now weary of her old life and willing to leave it behind in favor of new memories.
Then Joey inadvertently hurts her feelings by lying about his dream-- and then Yami Marik hits her with a Shadow Game that turns out to be one of the most violently traumatic things she's ever gone through, followed up by a Punishment Game that is slow torture and by its very nature meant to shake her very being to the core.
I tend to think, while parts of it were a touch clumsily done, that what happened with Mai during the Oriechalcos arc was actually the result of post-traumatic stress. She chose to act like everything was fine when it wasn't, and things that might not have bothered her in the past are now crushing. Valon's method of "therapy" is to play into her depression and anxiety, and while he loves her, he's exactly the opposite of what she needs, despite being a listening ear. He maneuvers her into blaming people for not giving help she didn't ask for, and encourages her to stir her own anger and lash out. Mai IS brainwashed, just not by magical means.
It's understandable, then, that Joey has to work so hard to remind her that yes, he does care about her, that her passion for him is love, not hatred, and that he'll do anything for her, even give up his soul.
So what does Mai do? She charges right into another confrontation without thinking, just like when Joey "died" against the Ultimate Dragon. Mai is a reasonable, level headed, calculating woman, but her raging love throws all of that right out the window. And like after Duelist Kingdom, Mai takes off to sort her own heart out. (You can keep your "She wants to be a better Duelist!" comments to yourself, thank you. She wants to be a better duelist? Yugi has taught her that a duelist has honor, strength, gentleness and love. She wants to be a better person. That's what she leaves to work on.)
I tend to think Mai will do better this time, even though I have to wag a finger at her for just sprinting off again (with Valon it's probably for the best, since he needs to do some sorting out of his own, but Joey is very connected to her best potential support group: Téa, Serenity and Yugi.) If the epilogue with Vivian is any indication, she's already better off than at the end of Battle City.
Final Distillation:
Mai's story is about breaking through jadedness into wholeness.
Mai is not only clever, she's very intelligent.
She became who she is in order to survive.
Mai forgets herself when her temper flares up enough.
Mai is a feminist, and held Sisterhood above any other bonds prior to Duelist Kingdom.
She still holds Sisterhood very high.
Mai has a motherly side, which she turns on random women and specific men in the form of tough love.
Mai is totally unabashed about using the tools at her disposal, and is a master at manipulating people.
Mai wants to be whole very, very badly, and spends most of her life (all of her life up until the end of the series) trying for it.
