Content With Conspiring, a Conspireshipping Blog

獏良のマンション「見取図」

#can we turn kaiba into a llama

#does kaiba dress in drag??

“You threw off my groove!”

“I’m sorry, but you’ve thrown off the CEO’s groove.”

#omg would Marik’s shoulder devil be Yami Marik?

“Don’t listen to that guy. He’s trying to lead you down the path of righteousness.”

#Rebecca should be the wife 

#Ok Ok but Kuriboh would totally be the little squirrel >w> 

“Kurikurikuri??”

“No nonONONONONONO-”

  # The Big 5 turning into animals

“Get them!”

“Hey, I’ve been turned into a penguin. Can I go home?”

“For the last time, we did not order a Magic Cylinder!”

“You know pal, you could have told me that before I set it up.”

#would baby kaiba have blue eyes white dragon plushies?

“Hey Yugi, you just missed your relatives.”

“Yeah, we just sent them up to your house.”

#Kaiba lines up all the yugioh spinoff protags in a line looking for a rival

“Hate your hair. Your hair. And your hair. Annnnd…”

“Lemme guess, you have a great personality.”

# And instead of a sewer crocodile it’s some sewer dragon thing..lol…

# The dagger on Bakura’s leg is the Millennium Rod

“Then I bet you weren’t expecting THIS.”

[SCREAMS OF HORROR]

“AHA!”

“Oh, okay.”

#So, when Kuzco gets turned into other animals, does Kaiba get turned into other monster cards, like UFO turtle and Fortress Whale since the big 5 got turned into cards?

“Don’t you say a word…”

So recently there’s been a wonderful personality chart circling around that states the personalities of the YGO characters. And while the chart is very interesting and useful, there’s been one thing we’ve found out that’s both surprising and confusing; out of all the characters, Ryou Bakura was ranked as having the highest level of narcissism, with altruism being the opposing trait.

Now what’s interesting about this is that he’s also ranked as being the most unselfish. Which makes no sense, seeing as “ showing a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish.” So how on earth can Ryou be “narcissistic” (which is completely the wrong term mind you) and be unselfish?

Ryou Bakura isn’t narcissistic; what he is, is self serving. He does things that benefits himself above anyone else, and sometimes these things can put others into a dangerous position. Such as Ryou keeping the Ring regardless of Yami Bakura’s presence in it, out of a sense of wanting to keep Bakura around so he wouldn’t be alone. Ryou isn’t however self preserving - he has absolutely no self preserverence and at the end of the day will sacrifice himself if it means to stop Bakura from harming his friends. This strikes a fairly odd balance, seeing as Ryou ends up being self serving up until a certain point. Ryou has his own motives for following along with the others, driven more by his desire to learn the origins of the items rather than the sense of serving the greater good. Being a hero is not in Ryou’s interest nor is Ryou interested in it. He wants to get something out of it, and he is willing to do underhanded things if they serve his purpose. But he isn’t outwardly selfish. All of this self serving Ryou does is completely internalized, dealing with Bakura and with his own motives, rather than being externalized. Externally, he’s polite and courteous and doesn’t want much from people.

This chart also brings up another very good point that I have been touching upon throughout this analysis series: Ryou and Bakura are extremely alike. They share a similar sense of being self-serving (narcissistic as it’s poorly put) and having lofty ideals/not really being there all the time. The only difference is that while Ryou is “selfless” or rather, without self preservation, Bakura is greedy, and he will tear down the world to get what he wants.

maybe he’s like a Ka? I think that’s the word for the duel monsters that come from souls in season 5

but doubly weird is his heavy association with the Millenium Rod, which was historically held by Priest Seto. the Rod does reach out to Kaiba, but he takes absolutely NO interest in it, which is easily explained by his aversion to magic, but Bakura also definitely wants nothing to do with the Ring. so it’s weird that he doesn’t even have to fight it or anything

does Yami Marik is actually Yami Seto?????

sdfghjk well tbh it depends on what animator draws him

the one you mentioned is from Michiaki Sugimoto and he animated Bakura in various episodes:

Ep. 65 for example:

He’s not exactly my favourite animator but he gave us some gems:

In Ep. 71:

(pls get some rest look at those dark circles)

In Ep. 41

In Ep. 84

and more in my gifset you mentioned

The animator has a tendency to draw him “softer” (like all other characters as well, Jonouchi has huge eyes in this animation) and with more of a Ryou-semblance than other animators do. Like even in Duelist Kingdom there are moments where it’s literally Ryou’s face with just an evil glare, so he looks more like a mean Ryou than Yami Bakura imo, look at that:

From Ep. 35 :

this is what evil Ryou looks like 😈😈

My favourite animators and their takes on Yami Bakura will always be:

Takahiro Kagami :

And a very close second is

Hidetsugu Hirayama :

BEST expressions.

In the manga (and at times even in the sub but they are not that consistent there) they make a clear point that the other characters always realise when Yami Bakura takes over Ryou’s body. Despite Kazuki drawing them differently, also the characters around them go like “he looks different/more confident” with both Ryou and Yugi when they change into Yami-mode. I think the main difference between Ryou and YBakura is in their eyes. They get more slit-like (in Season 0 they even change colour), and he gets his “hair horns” and sometimes even pointy teeth. And he grins differently. But just like with Yami Yugi and Yugi Muto, I think there is an obvious difference. But still, the faces remind them of the original “owner” of the body.

YGO Tumblr Text Posts Part 6!

Yeah almost all of it’s Bakura and idc

sorry for the late reply. I honestly had some things to do lately and I knew it would take me some time to reply to this, anyway

I’ve seen many posts speculating about Ryou’s soul room and from what they say overall they mostly see it as this room of a simple boy, ofc, but with some dark traces or secrets hidden away thanks to the influence of the ring (see here and there) - which is a very realistic way of seeing his soul room imo because no matter how many times they try to deny it (in canon itself) the spirit of the ring has 100% been a big influence in Ryou’s life . period. It left an impact, for sure, and naturally so, otherwise, it’s just sloppy characterisation which is a common bad habit with the Bakuras I noticed anyway I am digressing...

Drawing conclusions from the fanon’s pov, I also tried to analyse some of the canon content... In the anime we were blessed with that wonderful, good-quality animated episode 79 which is literally just a Bakura filler cause none of it is shown in in the manga and in that episode (if you watch the sub version cause it was cut out in the dub) we can see, before that moment where Malik and Yami Bakura are talking “inside Bakura’s host”, a transition that goes:

...from Ryou’s dreaming face -> to Domino City -> to outer space -> and then this:

I’m 99% sure this is the animators’ idea/theory of Ryou’s soul room - which looks very similar to Yugi’s in fact.

You can clearly notice that it starts with an “opening of doors” sequence, almost like we’re entering a room, and it ends with another set of opening doors as well in the same ancient style of Windows Moviemaker. What i guess we can decipher from that, is that Malik was looking around for Yami Bakura, entering Ryou’s soul room at first and then leaving it. The next “room” we see might even be Yami Bakura’s soul room - even if it looks just like a vast space/infinite sky.

Here we see Malik in the middle of this infinite space. The “opening of doors” that precedes this setting is a clear sign for me that we are NOT in Ryou’s soul room anymore here. Also cause Malik says:

“...found it.” So he was probably looking around for Yami Bakura’s soul room, proving in fact that he was in Ryou’s before that. We even see Yami Bakura “flying” and coming from somewhere else to reach Malik:

...so we can’t even imagine how big and vast and almost infinite Bakura’s soul room might be (the concept of it being infinite even makes sense when you think about how big/endless Atem’s soul room is - the labyrinth of stairs)

Yami Bakura’s first reaction to that is:

which proves to us even more that Malik really managed to enter their soul rooms in this scene. Also because it makes sense since he gained access with it through the Rod. I like the idea of Yami Bakura having to fly to talk with him because I think his soul room is so vast and has more to offer than anyone can imagine...

ANYWAY, sorry i am digressing again - we were talking about Ryou here:

Ryou’s soul room looks pretty similar to Yugi’s: a room full of scattered toys of their childhood. What is peculiar about Ryou’s is that, between all the toys of cars and Godzilla and a big ass soldier, we see what looks like some sort of Barbie dolls:

here is one, and another:

One could, of course, conclude from that that Ryou liked to play with Barbie dolls as a kid (which is fucking CUTE) BUT i have to say that seeing that second doll placed right next to a figurine of a plane with a broken wing kind of feels like... telling to me... I know these are all headcanons but what if these dolls are supposed to be Amane’s toys?

What we know about Amane - Bakura's deceased sister - is that she died at a young age, with her mother, in a car accident - so it’s no reach to think that this plane and the fact that it is broken might even suggest that some of these toys might have even belonged to Ryou’s little sister at the time of the tragic incident?? And he keeps them in his soul room as a memory of a past long gone in which they used to play together and he was more happy ofc and careless?? fucking tragic, i know.

So... what I’m gathering from that animation sequence is that the toys in Ryou’s soul room do NOT ONLY symbolise some sort of innocence in him - kind of like in Yugi’s case - but they give me more of a nostalgic meaning, because in fact if we have to point out the difference between his and Yugi’s childhood, in Ryou’s case it’s marked by memories of a past long gone, a state of being he never got to live again ever since the tragic event. But the fact that he keeps them in his soul room symbolise like a longing, imo, of that peaceful state of mind he used to know back then, only as a child. *cries*

So, in conclusion, if you want to hear my version of Ryou’s soul room it would in fact be very similar to what the animators did there: A scattered pile of toys and objects of his past, his innocence, and his nostalgia. More objects that allude to his sister cause let’s not forget he still writes letters to her in heaven like shown in the manga and his mother, and the natural grieving that comes with it. Plus, i would add some duel monster cards and most of all some figurines of his DnD campaigns, cause they left an impact on his life as well. I’d imagine most of them are placed neatly inside a glass case, like a proud collection, but the ones hidden in the back are stained with blood and have cracks on their surface - cause a big portion of traumatic events that happened in his life were, unfortunately, alluded to these DnD figurines.

Since we can also see walls in some depictions of these soul rooms (like in Anzu’s case we can see them belonging to a dance room), I like to imagine Ryou’s walls to be transparent, made of glass, and reflecting onto that vast sky-like place that seems to belong to Yami Bakura’s soul “room”. Cause as much as it might be painful for him, he is always fully exposed to the spirit. Whatever goes on inside his room, or his head, is for the spirit to see and control, whereas he still has no clue from where or what that spirit comes from - and it’s portrayed in that infinite space he can only gaze upon but never venture in. But I like to think, by the time the Millennium World arc took place, most of his DnD figurines were immersed in sand, and the vast space he gazed upon changed into that of an ancient village, wrecked and abandoned, but for Ryou finally clear to see.

“Diabound, Spiral Wave!”