Little Voices: Page 38-55

Good GRIEF it's about darn time I did another commentary. And it only took several months and ribbing from Invid, too. We'll only be going to page 55, because going all the way to the end is just too much in one sitting.

So last time we left off, Ryou had discovered the other Bakura was still living in his head, and that Bakura has amnesia. On page 38, we see that he's taken off and Téa has no idea where.

A lot of stuff changed at the last minute in this set of pages. First of all, I was originally going to have some pages involving Kaiba's storyline right after Ryou discovers Yami B is still alive. I decided that would be too confusing and therefore pushed the pages back, instead moving into this scene right away. I mentioned this in the DeviantArt artist's comments. What I didn't mention is that, originally, I had intended to show Ryou and Téa's parting, a short conversation that I've been wrestling with on and off for two years. I had finally come up with a version that I liked, yet ironically, the page count was getting much too high and the story was getting a bit ponderous and bloated.

Furthermore, I wanted very much to show Tristan getting back from Singapore, but every idea I had for a page that did so was bland and not nearly informative enough (After all, we already knew from Duke that he was on vacation.) I am of the opinion that every page should either be interesting, funny, or at least move the plot along. While I wanted Tristan to show up more in the story (I hate it when people forget he exists) the pages I was coming up with just weren't enough of any of those requirements. So I grafted the two scenes together, discarding Ryou's actual departure in favor of showing a homecoming by Tristan instead. The original discussion between Téa and Ryou was two pages, so I cut three pages down to one.

(This is another place where I might consider posting the discarded first drafts someday.)

Tristan knows that Kaiba is sick and that he collapsed at a tournament because it was all over the tabloids. (The Big Eye: "Seto Kaiba at DEATH'S DOOR!?? Tournament Collapse!" There would be a quote right on the cover from Kaiba, too: "I'm not dying!" says CEO.) Also his friends tell him about these things.

I love page 39 for like a gazillion reasons. CX I probably should have done something with Marik's subplot (the Ishtar clan revealing itself to the world and promptly getting into a legal fight with the Egyptian government) during Magic Light, but quite frankly Magic Light didn't have "room" for that part of the story, and anyway I tend to think the reveal happened either before or after Magic Light's time period. I do, however, think that "Marik VS The Supreme Council of Antiquities" makes an awesome title for a story. XD There will be a lot more of that plot to show up, and I plan on doing a short (non full length story, so it doesn't count as one of the seven) set of pages involving the conflict coming to a head in between Little Voices and the next storyline. Marik will have a lot of fun and so will you.

His conflict with the Egyptian government is slightly inspired by the trouble that Native Americans still have dealing with the United States government, incidentally. Ironically, the United States will eventually become one of Marik's better allies in the matter. I don't see any conflict with what would happen in reality at all here: the US loves to make up for its mistakes by helping the wrong people. (Not that I think the US shouldn't help people. We just shouldn't do it for some of the reasons that we do, we should do it because we're nice people.)

Anyway, there's a bit of confusion between whether Ryou just opened the door through brute force or picked the lock. My original intent was that he picked the lock, so automatically that he didn't quite realize he was doing it, but I also don't really see a need to make that clear in the comic. The scene's funny, that's what's important.

I love drawing Marik. I love drawing Marik, and I love fiddling with his jewelry instead of just keeping it to what we see during the series. :) I also love lotus blossoms. 'Nuff said.

I suspect that Marik watches Duel Monster tournaments and has actually noticed Yugi acting like Atem all on his own, but he probably also keeps a certain amount of contact with Yugi, and with the others.

Marik is adorable when he's being socially awkward. XD

Page 40 was originally going to be over hot tea, but it occured to me that Ryou probably came in from at least ninety-degree weather (That's about thirty-two degrees Celsius). So yeah, nix on the hot tea.

Ryou gets a lot of weird flak over the fact that he writes letters to Amane. Personally I think the people who fetishize it have more wrong with them than Ryou does: it would be much creepier if Ryou kept a little RPG style doll of her and talked to it. There are a lot of ways of grieving, and writing letters to the lost is one of the more common ones, both in Japan and America.

On the other hand, a lot of people also feel alone in their grief, and it wouldn't shock me if Ryou does too-- he doesn't seem to me like he took her death well, and it also doesn't seem like he and his father pulled together over the loss of his sister and mother at all. So there's him worrying about whether it makes him crazy.

Again, Marik is uniquely suited to talk to Ryou about that kind of thing; he's not only lost quite a lot more than the average modern teenager, he's from a culture that really valued the importance of communing with the dead as part of dealing with loss, and there's no way an ancient Egyptian would have told Ryou writing letters to a dead person and then offering them up to her was crazy or even remotely creepy.

Panel 1-3 of page 41 is pretty much a recap, but it seemed sort of necessary for the characters to lay out what's on the table, just to lead into the final panel. Naturally, Ryou's a little shocked. Personally I feel he's a little disturbed at the idea of owning someone. There's also just the fact that he's so damn tired of dealing with Yami B at this point.

I think on page 42 what Marik means by "taking him off" Ryou's hands is, quite simply, that Marik's responsibility as a Tombkeeper includes things like Yami Bakura.

There's a certain section of the fandom who insist that Marik is still totally going to be messed up Yami Marik style, even after the series, and that the only thing that will get rid of Yami Marik is years and years of therapy.

No. I have taken a class in psychology and totally understand their reasoning, but that is not what happened at the end of Battle City. Yami Marik may have started as a mental disorder, but he didn't end as one, whatever he was. Because he could strap Marik's soul up in the corner the way he had separated Yugi and Atem to do the same thing, he and Marik are clearly distinct souls. Because Marik could "visit" Odion when his soul had been mostly eaten up, they are clearly distinct souls.

So my post-series Marik is relatively mentally stable and no longer has dissociative personality disorder, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. Magic has been shown in Yugioh to clearly be able to fix brains anyway (Kaiba). Marik probably still needs a bit of therapy, but not so much that he can't help Ryou with his problem now.

I tend to think the reason he knows how Ryou should go about calling Yami B forth has either something to do with my mildly random rant, with the fact that he's been talking to Yugi, or simply with the fact that Marik seems to me to be rather educated, magic-wise. I wouldn't be surprised if the heads of the Ishtar clan classified as being some level of sorcerer.

Ryou goes along with it on page 43 because he doesn't know what else to do more than anything. I like this page because it shows how fully in control Ryou actually is, whether he realizes it or not-- not only is Yami B being very childlike (the way the shadows hide his face was intended to call back to the way his face was mostly hidden by shadows when he witnessed Kul Elna's destruction) but he's also being totally compliant to Ryou's will, despite the fact that it's difficult for him. Ryou doesn't help him for several reasons, one of which being that he's still a little afraid of actually approaching Yami B, but also because he simply wants to make Yami B do things for himself. He's a compassionate guy, but he's not THAT warm toward Yami B yet.

The series had several interesting ways to show one soul switching out for another, usually between Yugi and Atem. The "hands touching" method isn't the most original, but it's also one of my favorites. Go figure.

Marik doesn't expect Yami B to remember him on page 44 (although Yami B himself is frustrated and more than a little upset that he doesn't). Once again I went for "little kid Bakura" faces, because that's what I wanted to show: Everything that made him crazy has been blasted away. A frightened child is all that's left. Obviously he's still himself, which is what I wanted to be seen with the serious face he makes when he calls himself an avenger, but he's also more himself than he's been in several thousand years. (If that makes sense.)

The line "I wanted Ryou safe" is both a self-reassurance that he's not a bad person, despite the fact that he's sure he's done something wrong, and an admonition toward Marik himself. "I wanted Ryou safe, and you wanted to let a big red dragon spit on him!!" Not that Yami B actually remembers this; it's more like he's looking in on things inside Ryou's memories. That's also why he "fled."

I love Roo's face in the second panel of page 45. Also, Marik's not sure how much sense Ryou's explanation actually makes. B[

One of the commentors made the best statement in regards to page 46: that Yami Bakura being human means that he can change. Yes. This is exactly it. The other point of this page was to point out the fact that yes, I DO know that I draw Bakura taller than he was in the series. XD

Ryou develops a slight case of Yami B's eye shadows on page 47. Uh oh. Also I finally stopped copping out and actually tried to draw Odion's facial tat. Booya.

We have another cameo on page 48; Angela the dragon, who belongs to Lady Blackwings of Deviantart. She's a nice lady and does pretty colors. O_O Poor Yami B is basically the kitten in Ryou's basement right now. I also feel that this page shows one of the ways that Ryou IS a good person, despite everything: He doesn't trust the guy and dislikes that he's basically been forced into nursing him, but the sad puppy face Yami B is making still works on him, and he's still being kind to him.

I've always been mildly fascinated with Thief King Bakura's life before he became part of the Yami Bakura entity. Invid and I agree that what happened in the Millenium World arc couldn't have been exactly what truly happened in the past (more like a "summary" of what had happened, altered by the modern elements added to it and by the fact that it was actually a role-playing game), so there's a lot of questions left unanswered. But he was probably the one character who was up to the most interesting mayhem.

On page 49 I chose to add the "meanwhile" note, something I don't normally do, mainly because the Bakura scene set was so long. I have always had it in my head that Bakura's visit to Marik takes place around the same time or slightly after Yugi, Joey, Serenity and Rebecca visit the Kaiba mansion, but I was concerned that chopping the scenes apart would be too confusing, and I really don't like being confusing. :x (I'm aware of the fact that I still am anyway.)

I love that Mokuba screams Yugi, Joey, and Serenity's names in all capital letters, but Rebecca's name is said with normal capitalization like it's just sort of added on. Also, that last panel was one of many panels that was a lot easier to draw because Invid is nice and lets me borrow his portable DVD player: Instead of trying to dig up my manga volumes, which are notoriously insidious to find (I swear they're alive and do it on purpose) I could just grab one of the Duelist Kingdom DVDs and put the DVD player on my desk. XD (This is one of many reasons why I simply find it easier to write a story following mostly anime continuity- that and the fact that parts of the manga send my suspension of disbelief crashing through the floor, and then it drowns in the sea below while flailing around for a tiny key that probably floated a hundred feet away by the time it should have reached my poor, poor suspension of disbelief. >_<)

And since I got a laptop recently, it's going to be even easier than that- Now I can just save screenshots and use those. Yay, technology! XD

I love Roland to pieces. I sort of ad-libbed a lot of the furniture on page 50, but I figure if Kaiba really does have OCD or something, it probably gets moved around enough that it doesn't matter. Kaiba's bed is a totally different one from the one that is briefly shown in Magic Light. I could say something like "Well, this is a fancomic and I was being less careful about references and junk during Magic Light YOU'RE NOT PAYING ME to read this so don't complain," but that's not how I feel about it: The fact that I'm not making any money off this doesn't mean I don't care about it. So my official explanation is actually that Kaiba was sleeping in a guest room that one time, because burning his clothes in a wastebasket filled his room with a smoky smell that he couldn't sleep with. XD (Well sure, it was on a balcony, but he left his door open, so the smell still got in.) (Yes, this is how much of a nerd I am.)

In the original version of the fanfic that became this comic, it was actually going to be Serenity that went in to talk to Kaiba, and worse, she visited him alone. I wrote the original idea several years ago, and that's my only excuse. Past-me mostly cared about her agendas, while Current-me cares more about the fact that Joey knows Kaiba better than Serenity does and is more likely to understand Kaiba's hangups right away, and that Serenity is much more timid than Joey is. This is one of the reasons I'm not bothered by my own writing process taking a long time: Fics end up less stupid because of it. I love page 51 because that maid is totally talking in lolcatspeak, and Kaiba totally just nearly dropped an F-bomb. XD The sketch version of this page featured Kaiba snuggling down further into the bedding contentedly before realizing someone (who wasn't Mokuba) was sitting next to him, but it wasn't particularly clear what was happening-- it looked more like Joey was snuggling into Kaiba. For obvious reasons (this scene is homoerotic enough!) I chose to have him say "Mnf?" instead.

Also, Kaiba hires no maids under the age of 25 in my universe. I just want to make that clear: Women who don't look like they could be Mokuba's mom need not apply. XD I gave her a French Maid style costume anyway, just because it's so very anime for her to be wearing one.

In panel 3 of page 52, Kaiba's muffled words are "Oh Gawd!" If you look closely, you'll see that Joey has chosen to wrap his legs around Kaiba's right arm. Kaiba finds this incredibly disturbing. XD

Some of the way Joey's talking about healing on page 53 caused a reader or two to wonder just how sick Kaiba actually is, since a lot of people don't think of the flu as being a life-threatening illness and it almost sounded as though that's what Joey was saying, that Kaiba was dying or something.

The common flu is one of those funny illnesses that, when a person gets it, can either run its course if the person is getting proper treatment, or can, if the person is NOT getting proper treatment, get worse and worse and worse. Kaiba is essentially prolonging the amount of time that he's sick by being difficult to take care of. XD That's part of what Joey's telling him off for, anyhow.

Another side to it is the fact that Joey knows that Kaiba's still a little out of wack over the car accident. This whole scene became a scene about how Kaiba couldn't even apologize to Joey when he thought Joey was awake, and now is the first time Joey's outright told him that it's okay and they can move on. They're communicating better than they were back at Duelist Kingdom, but it's not the kind of communication you normally see between two healthy people. Page 54 turned out pretty much exactly as I wanted it, and while it's not as heavy impact as a scene about Kaiba standing in the rain so nobody bothers him at his father's grave, I'm still quite pleased with the moment and consider it quite important.

At this point in the story, Joey's opinion about Kaiba has morphed into sadness that Kaiba's so messed up.

And of course, the delectable page 55, which I simply cannot leave out. Look at that Roland! Look at hiiim!! XD Mokuba would seem to have funny ideas about how to get people to relax. Also, as noted in the page comments, Earl Grey is considered by some to be a breakfast tea. I thought it was a bit funnier than coffee.

In this fancomic, as a totally random aside, I chose to have Roland's full name be "Roland Isono," as Isono is his Japanese name. This seemed like a fairly economical solution: His dub name is the only given name I've known the character to have, and his Japanese name is the only family name I've known the character to have. And they sound comfortable when said aloud next to one another.

Next commentary, I'll probably try to plow all the way to the end! Yay! XD

The Children's Card Game

There's something that my dear sister (GDG-this is Invid) refers to as the "children's card game fallacy."

Simply put, it's the fact that fans of the series view the characters as treating a simple "children's card game" as a huge piece of srs bsnss. (Thanks a lot for that observation, LittleKuriboh. You have officially warped the fandom.)

Well, it's certainly true that they put an awful lot of stock into a game, but it goes beyond being a children's card game.

You see, when Takahashi was writing the early chapters, there was only one card game that was well-known enough for him to be talking about.

He called the game in his manga Magic & Wizards, but he was really talking about Magic: The Gathering.

(Note Grandpa's emphasis that it was the card game that "is such a hit in America." If you ever get pestered by people talking about the purity of the card game in Japanese due to its origins, there's a stick to hit them with. Yeah, the game is different-but Takahashi thought of it as an American game.)

You might dismiss this as an unfounded theory, but aside from the obvious fact that Magic was and is the first, biggest, and most-played card game in the entire world, the cards that Takahashi designed are essentially a simplified version of the M:TG cards.

Not necessarily the individual cards (though I'll get to that). If you look at the card back of a manga or anime Yu-Gi-Oh! card, you'll see that it has a dark brown oval in the center, with a brown "background" and a tan border.

Check out this article on the M:TG site, which showcases the game's card back (with a hypothetical variant back that never was). The proportions are rather different, but it's essentially what Takahashi was building from.

The fronts have some similarities, too; when Takahashi designed his cards, he put stars on them, possibly because he didn't know quite enough about M:TG to know just what the mana cost on a Magic card meant. (By the way, if you ever wondered about the "spell card" change in Yu-Gi-Oh! because you weren't following the game, it's all Hasbro's [M:TG's proprietary company] fault. They thought the use of "magic" was a misleading use of their trademark, as Magic players refer to their cards in a similar fashion. Never mind that Hasbro can't actually trademark the word "magic...")

It does, in fact, go further.

Check out this old picture of the Blue Eyes White Dragon, and then compare it with this picture of Shivan Dragon, one of M:TG's old famous cards.

Note the general similarity of the poses.

There's another one that has similarities to an old school Magic card, Summoned Skull. Compare this manga image to Lord of the Pit:

This is further highlighted by Takahashi's anniversary art version of Summoned Skull, which in homage to its origins has the same color scheme as Lord of the Pit, though its appearance has diverged along different directions from the "traditional" Summoned Skull design most of us know from the anime.

(Note that, in the two games, their positions of power relative to each other are essentially reversed. Lord of the Pit is [mostly] stronger than Shivan Dragon but less practical, while the same is true of Blue Eyes White Dragon compared to Summoned Skull. Not that any of the cards are competitive in the modern games...)

Of course, any discussion of the early manga version of Duel Monsters/Magic & Wizards would be highly incomplete without looking at Seto Kaiba, everyone's favorite psycho player.

Takahashi has apparently stated that Kaiba was based on somebody who was a huge jerk to one of his friends originally, but the character has obviously moved away from his humble, cruel-guy origins.

I have a theory as to why the character evolved the way he did, and I'm going to share it here. It's pretty crazy, and it hinges on a completely insane coincidence, but I'm sticking with it.

Flash back to 1999. This was during the early days of the anime, more or less. Guess who was rocking the Magic: The Gathering world at that time?

His name was Kai Budde.

Now, Kai Budde is not Japanese (although Japanese players have traditionally had a pretty big impact on the game). He's German. But if you parse his name, well... It's not much of a stretch at all to notice the similarities between Kai-ba and Kai-Budde.

They even look a bit similar, as far as such things go.

(Pictures ganked from the Yu-Gi-Oh! wiki's Kaiba page and Kai Budde's previously linked Hall of Fame bio page. Sorry if it bothers anybody, but I'm doing a historical essay here, and I think it's fair use.)

It's impossible that Takahashi derived Kaiba's name from Kai Budde's-Budde's first victories that propelled him to worldwide Magic fame occurred in 1998, and even presuming an extremely leisurely publishing schedule, "The Cards with Teeth" would have come out well before that, sometime in late 1996 or early 1997. (The Yu-Gi-Oh! wiki, being heavily focused on the card game, doesn't have a date for the chapter itself, and I'm hesitant to guess too closely.)

Anyway, why is it important that Yu-Gi-Oh!'s card game is based on Magic?

Well, according to market research, the biggest demographic of Magic players is in the 15-16 year old age bracket. In effect? The same age as the characters from the series.

Further, it might seem silly, but Magic really is serious business. Aside from the fact that certain old cards from the game are extremely pricy (some go for somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars apiece, which makes participating in a format where those cards are legal very difficult for newcomers), you can actually make big money playing Magic. People do.

There are hundred upon hundreds of players worldwide who compete in sanctioned tournaments, and many of these sanctioned tournaments have large monetary prizes. Kai Budde actually made something of a living off of the game at the height of his career, as I understand it.

Basically, the game we see in the various Yu-Gi-Oh! series is what Magic would be like if it reached the scale of a big-name pro sport.

Which isn't entirely impossible, you know. Just not likely.

Yet.

Why Background Characters In Yugioh Are Awesome

If you look, the other characters in this are also doing entertaining things. X3 (Two of them are staring at Kaiba with either trepidation or awe, while the couple to his right are having an argument and ignoring him completely. XD)

On the Subject of Kaiba Brands...

...I rest my case.

Need I say more?

Little Voices: Pages 20-27

As I noted in the last commentary, I wanted to talk about pages 20, 21 and 22 as a unit, so that's what I'm doing.

Bakura has always been a fascinating character to me, and I tend to feel that he gets a bit abused in current fandom (mostly, apparently, thanks to the Abridged Series, but the character abuse has always been there.) Throughout the series, the man was living a horror story, but it's kind of a different one from the abuse-slash that ran rampant in the fiction lines for a while there (I'm sure it still does, but I stopped reading it a while ago.) So I try to handle him with a bit more respect than that. What I wanted, with this scene, was to really strike the readers with the pain and horror of his story, and contrast it with the quiet dignity and anger he has while he's telling it.

I also wanted to point out that he's not really the weak sissy-boy that people think of him as being. XD I don't think any of us would have fared much better in his position.

Yes, he did sort of cut off a friendship speech on page 22, although I don't think it was a friendship speech that was going to run on for more than a sentence. One of the other things I happen to like about Bakura is that something about his voice lets me wax more poetic than I usually get to in comics; Joey gets surprisingly poetic sometimes too, but most of the time, for most characters, poetic descriptions and musings sound odd in regular dialogue. Maybe that's also why I enjoy writing Japanese people in general.

Bakura's also quite a bit worried here that there's some specific reason that the Ring kept teleporting back to him, and that it's a reason he doesn't want to know about. I'll sort of spoil it by saying that he discovers most of the truth by the end of Little Voices.

Also, the black bird from page 21 is gone in 22.

Page 23 starts one of my favorite scenes in Little Voices. The girl in the first panel replaced a different character in the precomic: Green, from my original webcomic The Law of Purple. I replaced him because it didn't make any sense for an alien to be dueling Yugi in Game of Dreams, and enough of the people who read YnY also read LOP. XD (Unfortunately, that's also why I couldn't use anyone that got sent in: Green's voice is too uniquely his own, and wouldn't have worked for anyone in the handful of characters I have in the pool.) I kind of wish now that I had drawn Green's Frog Shirt on her, though.

I have a short skit in my head of what happened right before Joey ran up to Yugi, for the interested:

Joey and Serenity see Kaiba sleeping on a bench in an out of the way corner.

Joey: What the hell?

They lean over him.

Serenity: (slightly pink, because Kaiba is a cute sleeper) Maybe we should wake him up.

Joey: Nah, let him sleep. We need to find Mokuba.

Serenity: We can't leave him here by himself!

Joey: So, you stay with him and watch him!

Serenity: (blushing madly) JO-EEY!

But Joey is already gone.

He was tucked beside a vending machine, btw, that somehow never got drawn. I'll probably do gimme art of it later. Also, I love how Serenity gets almost comfortable with teasing him, then switches into Mom Mode on page 24. The Kuriboh Bag was inspired by Aaliyan, who also, by the by, has done some gift art for me featuring Yukai and her character Kipacha. :3

I've had the idea of Kaiba coming down with the flu for years. It was in all the very earliest versions of Game of Dreams, including the version that wasn't actually part of YnY as a story. (In a couple of them, Serenity had to deal with him all by her poor little self. Weep for her.) I like how it brings him down without involving a crapload of drama, which to be frank a lot of fanfiction could do with less of. (I prefer craploads of drama to be used in cautious amounts.)

And since this scene deals with Serenity seeing a little more past the Kaiba Ultimate to the vulnerable Seto, I had to let Seto see a little bit of Tough Girl Serenity on page 25. She's still embarrassed as hell, and not as sure of herself as she was in Magic Light when she was hitting her father upside the head with a turkey, but she absolutely refuses to fail at what she's been charged with doing, and Kaiba can respect that.

Also, page 26 totally proves Serenity right and Kaiba wrong, when he passes out just like she said he would. Take that, boy. XD I think Joey's Duel Disk looks more like a spaceship glued to his arm in the first panel, but somehow that amuses me more than it annoys me.

Yugi's laughing mainly because, when I was first writing all this, I had to express how hard I was laughing somehow. There aren't words for how pleased I am with that expression. Serenity's little girl act gets me going pretty badly too. X3

Poor Joey. His legs are still hurting him, and now he has to carry Kaiba around. (You must really care, Joey, if you're still willing to put up with this.)

I did several inked versions of panel three as practice, because I was worried Kaiba passing out wouldn't look quite right. I think it paid off. Second panel's "What's going on with you" feels kind of clunky, but it's for a good reason: Joey knows Kaiba well enough to know "What's going on" and "What's wrong with you" would both be taken in completely the wrong way, so he phrases it in a very deliberate way, so that Kaiba understands him.

There were two extra pages that would have gone next, but they were, despite amusing, slightly tedious and messy with the flow. (I might post sketchy versions of them later.) The first one mainly featured things like Mokuba declaring that he was going to do a paparazzi check, Yugi taking both Joey and Kaiba's Duel Disks (because Kaiba by himself is heavy enough) while Joey shifted him into a better position, Serenity arranging some benches for them to lay Kaiba down on (so he wouldn't be on the floor, you know), and Kaiba muttering utter nonsense through his fever. (At one point snuggling into Joey and smiling in his sleep, which weirded Joey out more than just a bit. XD) The second page mostly covered them putting Kaiba on the bench (Yugi is helping Joey with all the more awkward parts of moving Kaiba around, btw, like making sure his head doesn't flop back violently).

And of course he wakes up on page 27, because Serenity got something cold for his head. This scene is, as a matter of fact, the exact and only reason I designed that bulky, poofy leather jacket for Yugi to wear in this storyline: It was designed to look good, yes, but it was designed first and foremost to double as a decent pillow for this scene. Their Duel Disks are all underneath the bench, and Yugi, Serenity and Joey are all sitting on the floor because they're hoping to shield him from view a little more. (I doubt it's really working.)

I like the one-liner scolding from Mokuba while Serenity's making a relieved face in the background. I also like that, while Joey's scolding Kaiba and Kaiba's snarking back at him, Kaiba is also noticing where Joey's coat is and is practically hugging the thing when he tells Joey not to touch him. (I'm not entirely sure he's aware that he's doing it.) It's another one of those nice things about comics; doing one thing with the dialogue and another with the imagery, and also just doing two things at once. (Kaiba started shivering violently when Joey put him down; that's why Joey gave him the jacket.)

I'm also very amused at Joey calling Kaiba an idiot. When Kaiba does things like running off without seeking help or refusing to accept help, Joey's reaction to me always says "Kaiba, you are an idiot!" And while Joey has plenty of his own idiotic moments, it's pretty well a fact that Kaiba can be a real idiot himself. I just sort of like watching them call each other idiots. I had a lot of male friends in high school who interacted exactly like this.

Kaiba's facial expressions turned out a lot more little-kid vulnerable than I had originally planned here, but it's something that I'm happy with. Joey's all "Don't you DARE get up" and he looks totally docile in response, whereas in the sketch he looked more like a wet cat. I basically decided, factoring the exhaustion and the sickness with the fact that he totally had no idea where he was for a moment there, that he probably doesn't have enough energy to look like a wet cat quite yet. XD


Kaiba just has one of those character designs that looks quite childlike and youthful as soon as he stops yelling and looking fierce. So drawing that vulnerability out of him is really pretty easy, even to do by accident. :P

There's a little hint of the direction I'm going with Mokuba in this page, too, which is basically that he's going to be as awesome as an adult as he is as a little kid. 83 I've always felt there's a strong undercurrent in Mokuba and Seto's relationship in which Mokuba is taking care of Seto as much as Seto is taking care of Mokuba, and I certainly know I'm not alone in that opinion. And since this (Mokuba as caretaker) began sometime in the series and got stronger as time went by, I like to take the opportunity to play with it here. (Of course, Seto doesn't always realize he's being taken care of, but that's his problem.)

Oh, let's see, what's coming next... Next few pages, this problem gets resolved, and then we discover where Duke and Tristan have been this entire time. Then I believe it's back to Bakura, which is as it should be. XD

Thanks for the warning!

I seem to abuse Kaiba a lot in these, eh?

Therapy, Joey Style

Lines taken from "Rescuers: Down Under." Man it's been a long time since I watched that movie.

Kaiba Brand

(Hello, YnY blog readers. I am not GDG, but her brother Invid, who as a guest blogger may occasionally post here when I have the urge. The top link in "Linkage" here at this blog is Awesomer Than Thou, my blog. Click it. Click it now.)

Something that GDG talks about (well, complains about) is that the "non-sequel" Yugioh series have turned the characters of the DM series into archetypes to be utilized.

Kaiba, obviously, is one of these; in fact, he's the most obvious of them. To the point where GDG has labelled the various "Kaibas" in somewhat derogatory fashion.

Kaiba is the genuine Kaiba, of course. Whether or not you accept substitutions or imitations no doubt depends on your tastes.

You might, for instance, find Manjyome Jun/Chazz Princeton, Kaiba lite, less filling but more entertaining.

Or you might go for the hearty but bland store-brand Kaiba, Kaiser whatever-the-heck-his-real-name-is, whose only real characterization in the first season was that he was too perfect for his own good. (Be careful, he goes bad after a while.)

There's also Edo/Aster Phoenix, named either for a Yugioh-related Internet personality (there isn't a version of his webpage I know of that isn't five years out of date, hence the Google search) or a flower, who is known as both British Kaiba and diet Kaiba. Because he's British, and can give you brain damage.

Then there's Jack Atlas, who is for obvious reasons known as ghetto Kaiba. The guy does have, unlike his non-genuine Kaiba predecessors, some honest and genuine angst-you have to give him points for that, at least.

Jack is trying for a re-branding, though, having grown tired of the current characterization: Pimp Kaiba.

Only time will tell if he is successful.

Fandom Rant: Kaiba, Kisara, and silentshipping

(glances at title) That seems a little off, does it? Well, it's not.

Recently while searching for more stuff to put into YnY's collection of other people's Yu-gi-oh next generation stuff (this doesn't count GX, it's fanmade nexgen of the original cast I look for) I became more aware of the attitude that many Kisara/Kaiba fans have toward other Kaiba pairings.

As one shipper put it: "Seeing Kaiba with anyone but Kisara sickens me." (Emphasis mine.)

Sickens you? Really? That seems a little harsh, for one thing.

I guess I can understand the roots of this rather arrogant, evangelistic attitude about the whole thing. Kaiba/Kisara is considered "canon" by most people. (For the record, I actually like the person who said that, just not what she said. Which is why I'm not pointing out her name, because I don't want any jerks getting the idea that I want her flamed or something.) Some anti-silentshippers, whom I have much experience with (being the stalwart captain of the ship), go so far as to call Kisara "evidence" that Kaiba and Serenity shall "never be." My fellow silentshippers have gone to such extremes in order to "get around the obstacle" of Kisara as claiming that Serenity is Kisara's reincarnation. This is preposterous, and it's kind of disheartening that they feel the need to stretch so far.

Here's what really bothers me about the whole thing, though-- Seto Kaiba and Kisara are not actually a canon couple.

You read right. And I'm not insane. Kisara's in love with Priest Seto, not Seto Kaiba. Kaiba is Priest Seto's reincarnate, sure-- but he's not Priest Seto himself. Are Yugi and Atem the same person? All evidence points to NO. In Yu-Gi-Oh, reincarnation is not resurrection. If Seto Kaiba is fulfilling some destiny, it's because Priest Seto is using him, by proxy, to get the job done. Kisara herself says, "you're like him, but you're NOT him." And even more than that? By the time Priest Seto would have died, he and Kisara were actually a merged soul. THAT soul is the one that would have been reincarnated, which is how Kaiba still had a Blue Eyes as a Ka. (The Shipper's List agrees with me: "blueshipping" is Kaiba/Kisara, "Mizushipping" is Priest Seto/Kisara.)

Which, in a way, makes Kisara Seto Kaiba's mother.

Give me a few moments, I need to get over the squick factor before I can continue.

Kisara has no direct reincarnate counterpart, but Kaiba decorates all his stuff with twisting, twining Blue-Eyes White Dragons. He feels a direct affinity for it. Priest Seto had no relation to the beast until he fell in love with Kisara. You can call that a sign that Kaiba remembers the romance somehow, or you can see it as something deeper-- Kisara living on within Kaiba himself. He's like her child. I, personally, find that a lot sadder and more touching, especially since we have no real hint of what his biological mother might have been like. (There are going to be photographs shown of her in Game of Dreams. I intend to make her look rather like Kisara, for the reasons given.)

Now then-- because Kisara has no direct counterpart, making one for her is essentially creating a fancharacter. I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't care for OC pairings, if I can help it.

So I'm going to stick to silentshipping, thank you.

Character Study: Seto Kaiba

Approximate Age: (by the Japanese anime) Fifteen to sixteen
Character Archetype: The Wounded Antihero
Probable Element and Alignment: Light, Chaotic Evil (pre-Mind Crush) Lawful Good (post Mind Crush.)
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: He tends to have somewhat clipped speech, and he also tends towards rude manners of address. He's not very good at talking to people.

Kaiba is one of the easiest characters to write out of character. He's one of the (cough) most studied characters in the fandom and one of the least understood ones at the same time. As Eric Stuart would say, he's a pretty deep guy. It's interesting that we the fans, who supposedly have deeper insight into the world of Yugioh than the characters should, don't seem able to understand him any more than the other characters do-- he's often cast as either evil, the romantic "bad boy" or simply as the prick everybody loves to hate, but he isn't actually any of these things.

I tend to see Seto Kaiba as being one character very slightly fractured into two, in the way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are presented as being the same person but act very differently. In the case of Batman, Bruce is the mask, Batman the brutal true personality. In the case of Kaiba it's a bit different, because both aspects of his personality are equally himself.

I will refer to the two halves as "Seto" and "Kaiba," which is what I do when writing narratives anyway. XD

Seto is a tortured, frightened child. He's terribly sensitive, easily hurt, insecure, and extremely needy. Kaiba is the mask, the protective, badass outer layer that takes on a persona not unlike that of James Bond-- without the sex, because even loveless sex would allow another person too close to Seto. People can have relationships with Seto Kaiba based on one of the two personas or both. They aren't totally separated from each other but they're different enough that he can switch back and forth to an extent.

This can easily be traced to his chaotic childhood-- He grew up crooked because somebody kept breaking him bit by bit as he went. (I actually have this theory that his biological father accidentally started the process by constantly telling him to buck up and be strong.)

His only adult relatives (so says the manga) basically threw him and his brother away the minute they had gotten through the money his parents left behind. It's possible-- and sadly, somewhat probable, that they didn't even get through the money. He lived daily with the constant threat of separation from the last person left to him (it's little wonder he was desperate enough to cheat Gozaburo in order to get adopted.) And then it turned out that the man he himself had chosen was a psychotic and abusive jerk, if not a sadist. Who wouldn't be a little twisted after all that?

The other aspect of Seto Kaiba's character that makes him difficult to pin down is this: He's dynamic, and part of that changing character shows in that his two halves slowly meld together as the series progresses.

In the beginning of the manga, the only part of "Seto" that we see is the oversensitive part. "Kaiba" is almost entirely driving the boat, and that's what makes early manga Seto Kaiba so insane and bloodthirsty. What I find fascinating about early manga Kaiba is that Atem-- psycho, wrathful Atem, not the noble king he is by the end of the series-- has mercy on him TWICE. Yes, first he made him "experience death" and then he tears the poor boy's mind into pieces, but both times it's something he intends his adversary to learn and grow from. This is the man who came closer than anyone (excepting a certain gunman) to actually MURDERING Yugi and his friends, and Atem still has pity on him.

Because by the time Atem applies the "Mind Crush" (or whatever you choose to think of it as), Seto Kaiba is such a scarred and twisted human being that the only way to fix him is to shatter him, so that this time maybe he heals right. (This is even pretty close to what Atem tells Mokuba in the comic.) Even in the Duel Monsters anime, this is more or less accurate. As Atem says there, Seto is searching for himself.

In Duelist Kingdom, he's balanced more between the two (and this is fairly clearly authorial intent, if you HAVE read enough of the manga to be aware of the "inner puzzle" symbolism that originally went with that.) But we see much more of "Seto:" we see him hurting, loving, and even trusting Yugi so far that he's willing to risk death for it-- and also suicidal, since he doesn't seem to mind the idea that Atem MIGHT kill him after all. I personally think that one of the factors that brings Seto out so much more strongly in Duelist Kingdom is that Pegasus somehow got more past "Kaiba" than anyone before Mokuba, and so his betrayal hurts more deeply. (Consider how important Duel Monsters was to young Seto, and the fact that Pegasus essentially allowed this broken child to directly influence the way the game itself was played. That must have meant a lot.) I tend to see Kaiba's reaction to Pegasus later as that of someone deeply dissappointed in a personal hero.

In Battle City, he's starting to settle into being both Kaiba and Seto at once-- and the Kaiba aspect of himself is also a bit calmer, the Seto aspect a bit stronger. We see a lot less drastic switching back and forth. He doesn't scream or yell or throw people around when he's ticked off at them, either. (Except when they need it.) He has fun from time to time. During the anime's Noa arc and with the destruction of Battle City Tower, he symbolically and literally defeats Gozaburo and leaves him behind forever. During the Noa arc, the anime watchers get to understand why he is what he is, and his relationship with his brother becomes stronger than ever. (I'm sure I haven't gone enough into his relationship with Mokuba, so far as certain of you are concerned, but I feel that's actually better discussed in Mokuba's essay.) As far as the comic is concerned, this state of affairs is enough to let us, the readers, know that he's going to eventually be okay.

In the anime, of course, we get about two seasons more of Seto Kaiba character development, and for those of us who enjoyed that part of the anime (for one, me) Kaiba's behavior was one of the main points of enjoyment. He becomes closer to Yugi and company, for one, and betrays the fact that maybe, just maybe, he actually has warm human feelings for them. Note the scene in which the Yugi clan is running away from the possessed rats. Several times he keeps Tristan from dropping Joey's soulless body, at one point even dragging Joey onto a fire escape and then holding Tristan up long enough for the rats to pass by. His hissy fits are also wonderful-- the hissy fit about Yugi losing to Raphael (so that's how Kaiba acts when he's dissappointed in people), the panic attack at the discovery of Paradius (what else would you call that?), and that last delicious, encouraging jab at Atem from the dub-- "You'd better not screw this up." YES, it's a jerky thing to say, but it's also a word of encouragement. Kaiba's not very good at talking to people, remember. And, of course, the subplot involving Alister, deliberately set up to be Kaiba's mirror, is terrific. Kaiba displays pity and compassion for Alister-- not because he deserves any compassion, but because he needs compassion, and Kaiba has compassion in him to give. He's not a romantic hero, but he's hardly evil, and he's much more than just a mouthy prick.

The most important piece of character development in the anime after the Atlantis arc, I feel, is the reaction he has to Yugi's proclaimation that Yugi will be dueling Atem. (I am glad he's in the AE arc in the anime, of course, but mostly because that gives a sense of closure in that he finally understands his role more fully.) He wants to duel Atem, he says, because he was the one who should beat Atem. But what Kaiba says is rarely exactly the way he feels. He wants to duel Atem because not dueling Atem feels like he won't have properly said good-bye. Atem is as important to him as Atem is to the rest of the group, and his behavior here is what proves it.

This brings up one more important aspect to Kaiba when it comes to writing him in character. Kaiba almost never says what he feels. He keeps silent at times that most people would feel a need to say something. When he does say something, he often sounds like a jerk even when he's not trying to be. This makes his facial expressions fairly important, and I personally often finding myself writing what I WOULD have him say, if he said things, and then taking it out, simply because it works better when I know what's going on in his head but don't reveal it.

One last note, and this being on the interaction between Kaiba and Joey: I get the very strong impression that Kaiba thinks Joey is hilarious. This is why he picks on Joey; not because he hates him, but because Joey is fun to pick on. Except when he landed at Duelist Kingdom, and then he was picking on Joey because, quite frankly, Joey was being a jerk at the wrong time. Eventually he and Joey are essentially friends; more on this in Joey's entry, I'm sure.

Final Distillation:
Kaiba is a collection of extremes.
Kaiba is dynamic and becomes a more stable person through the series.
He is a jerk partly because he has no social skills, but also partly because he really is just a jerk.
He still has warm human feelings anyway, and can be somewhat needy.
He's actually rather fragile, at the same time that he's tough as nails.
He rarely says what he means, and often says nothing when most people would.



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.