I created near-replicas of all of Yugi's cards and decks from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga.
Since today, November 25th, is the 29th anniversary of the first appearance of Magic & Wizards (or Duel Monsters, the name most people know it by) in Yu-Gi-Oh!, I figured this would be a nice way to mark the occasion.
I tried to make the template for these as close to the original in-manga Japanese cards as possible in terms of layout. (The card faces from Viz's translation were slightly changed to resemble the official cards).
(Decks pictured above: left, Yugi's original deck from "The Cards with Teeth" parts 1 and 2; right, Yugi's Grandpa's deck from the "Death-T" arc.)
All card names were re-translated to be as accurate to the original names as I could make them.
Similarly, the card text is altered to make it so that they actually reflect how the cards were used in duels, as the original text was sometimes not really reflective of how the cards worked, and some cards had no text at all.
(Decks pictured above: the"Duelist Kingdom" arc deck; the "Battle City" arc deck; and the two decks from the final duel, combined into one image for formatting purposes).
While there were a few obscure cards that were impossible to replicate, I'm proud of the work I was able to do with these.
It took me two years to make these cards, and I had a lot of help along the way. The biggest contributors were Alaz, Meow, and Icycatelf. Other contributors and referenced resource creators include Bustedsides, Shadow Force, Bog, and the Yugipedia admin team- Deltaneos, Cheesedude, and so many others.
And, of course, the art and original look and text of the cards is all from the mind/hands of Kazuki Takahashi. I consider this project to be a tribute to him and a mark of the influence his works left on the world.
By the way, I've taken more shots than what you see here. So if you have a favorite card that Yugi used in the manga that you want to see, let me know and I'll post a pic of it on this blog!
Hope you enjoyed seeing these things! It was a joy to work on this.
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Here's a fun one- an iconic magic trick of a card often used with "Black Magician" and "Black Magician Girl", "Magical Silk Hats"!
The Japanese card name uses a more formal, older term for top hat. Top hats were often made of silk in the 1700s and 1800s, with beaver fur being another common material. There's a good primer for this on Wikipedia, if you're curious.
And yes, in the original manga "Magical Silk Hats" is a Magic Card. Fans often tend to think of Yugi's classic decks as being Trap Card-heavy, but the truth is that he had very few originally. All things considered, it's more thematically fitting that this is a Magic Card anyway- after all, every good "Magician" needs a repertoire of classic magic tricks to perform!
And speaking of tricks: more info about how this card works in the manga below!
Let's take a look at "Magical Silk Hats" as it first appeared in Chapter 75, "The Cards Bare Their Teeth":
(Card image was cleaned up for presentation purposes.)
According to Yugipedia, the text on this card reads: "You can perform a trick attack in combination with a 'Magician!'".
This is hilariously vague! Barely a step up from cards like "Time Magician" that don't say anything on them at all.
But if you look at how this card works throughout its appearances in the manga, you realize it's a far more functionally complex card than you might initially suspect.
See, "Magical Silk Hats" is the kind of card that seems just on the cusp of being doable within the confines of a card game, but ultimately it can only be fully replicated in a digital simulation system of the kind you see in the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City arcs.
Despite my best efforts, even I couldn't fit every possible aspect of this card's function onto a regular 64 x 89 mm poker-sized card. If I crammed everything on there, the font size necessary to display it all would make the card impossible to read!
To give you an idea of what this would look like, though, here's a version of this card's text that accounts for every way Yugi uses it throughout its appearances in the manga:
"When you control a "Magician": create 4 "Silk Hat Tokens" and put them on or aside the field. You can hide currently on-field "Magician"s, Magic Cards, Trap Cards, and monsters you control (as well as monsters your partner controls if you use this card in a tag-team duel) under these "Silk Hat Token"s. Shuffle these "Silk Hat Token"s once you have finished hiding cards or monsters under them.
All hidden monsters retain their battle position and face-up/face-down status from before they were hidden.
Treat all Magic and Trap Cards under a "Silk Hat Token" as if they were set face-down.
If a now-hidden card was targeted for a monster's attack or special ability, or card's effect by your opponent before this card was activated: your opponent must choose a new target for that monster's attack or special ability, or for that card's effect.
"Silk Hat Token"s can be attacked by monsters your opponent controls during a Battle Phase. If an attack connects, the "Silk Hat Token" is destroyed. If there is a monster under that "Silk Hat Token", treat this as if an attack was declared on that monster, and perform the appropriate battle damage calculations if so.
If a Magic or Trap Card is under an attacked "Silk Hat Token", that card automatically activates, so long as its activation conditions are met. If not, that card stays face-down.
At any point during your turn, if you play or set a Magic Card or Trap Card, or Summon a monster: you can choose to hide that card or monster under a "Silk Hat Token" as well.
You can hide more than 1 card or monster underneath a single "Silk Hat Token".
During any phase of any turn, even during a declared attack in the Battle Phase: you can choose to shuffle the contents of these "Silk Hat Tokens" so that all contents end up in new "Silk Hat Token"s.
If you declare an attack with a monster under a "Silk Hat Token": destroy the "Silk Hat Token" that formerly hid that monster.
During any phase of your turn: you can choose to destroy any "Silk Hat Token"s you control. This does not affect the card(s) or monster(s) under that "Silk Hat Token"."
Phew! An absolute doozy of a card effect there. I suspect I would need two card faces to fully capture all of that.
The kicker is: that's not even the longest would-be card text in the game. The god card "The Sun of God Dragon", Ra, actually has a special ability that, if written out in full, would be longer than this!! But that's a post for another time.
Thanks for reading! Remember, if there are any manga cards you'd like to see, send me a message and I'll post about it here!
In addition to asks, I've decided to post about other significant or interesting Yugi cards here as well. I'm starting with the one most English-speakers call "Monster Reborn"- here, "Resurrection of the Dead".
This is a very important card, one that Takahashi strongly implies most represents Dark Yugi himself- as anyone who's read the last chapter knows.
Now, this card's name was a little tricky for me to get a handle on. I'm far from a translation expert, but my working understanding is that an extremely literal translation of this card's Japanese name, 「死者蘇生」, would be a phrase akin to "the dead come back to life".
A better version of it would be something like "Revive the Dead" or even just "Revive/Resurrect". I favor the latter approach, personally; but Joe Yamazaki and Anita Sengupta, the primary translators for Viz's English translation of "Yu-Gi-Oh!", preferred "Resurrection of the Dead".
I went with that for two reasons. One, retaining that "the dead" part of the name is an important enough aspect that it's worth emphasizing in the card's title; and two, "resurrection" as a word better fits what the card does, its larger thematic meaning (I'll get into that later), and ALSO ties back to one of the two Magic: the Gathering cards that likely inspired this one (see the end of this post).
As for the art.
You'll notice that, for my comparison shot, I didn't use the art typically seen outside of Japan, the ceremonial crystal-looking thing (Yugipedia link to that card face here). You might think this makes the Japanese art more accurate, but this is true only to a point.
In-depth look at the "Resurrection of the Dead" illustrations and more below the cut.
As far as I can tell, this card's first full-color manga appearance is in the color page for Chapter 95, "Terror of the Dungeon", as it showed up in the September 1998 issue of "Weekly Shonen Jump":
Here, it's gold- a common color for a depiction of an ankh to be. (For the record, the illustrations for this card in the Toei anime and Bandai card game- both dating from the same year- were gold as well.)
This coloring held throughout the original manga's run. Here's a scan from the color pages for Duel 343, "The Journey of the King", as they were published in the December 2007 edition of the US's version of "Shonen Jump":
My copy of this page, unfortunately, suffers from badly misaligned printing, so here's another scan from that issue to verify its coloring:
Though its background colors ended up changing, "Resurrection of the Dead" was depicted as a gold ankh right up until the very end.
The teal-bluish green ankh is entirely a Konami convention. They may have intended it as a nod to ancient Egyptian tjehenet, known more widely today as "Egyptian faience", but that's just more speculation on my end.
Nonetheless, all modern depictions of "Resurrection of the Dead"'s ankh are this teal-bluish green color, except in special circumstances.
There's more to it than that though. In the first few chapters of "Yu-Gi-Oh!", Dark Yugi's outfit has a notable addition that school Yugi doesn't wear: a pair of gold ankhs attached to his sleeves via buckled arm bands.
Ankhs are, of course, the hieroglyphic word for 'life', and when used as an object they often symbolize that concept.
It's very telling that Takahashi has them appear in Dark Yugi's very first on-panel appearance, as you can see below (from Chapter 1, "Puzzle of the Gods"):
It strongly suggests that this is the moment that Dark Yugi has fully 'returned to life'. You might even say the fact that he has two ankhs symbolizes that this is his 'second life', of a sort.
Sadly, these ankhs pretty much stop appearing after Chapter 2, and only make sporadic further appearances in Chapters 6, 9, and 10. Chapter 10, "The Cards with Teeth (Part 2)", is the last time they show up, coinciding with the first appearance of this card, funnily enough.
But the symbol continues to be associated with Dark Yugi even after that point, primarily through this card.
I do find it interesting, though, that the last time two gold ankhs show up in the same place is when we see both Dark Yugi and Yugi Mutou's copies of this card together in Chapter 343. Perhaps it's a subtle little nod to this design aspect, a side note to the main beat of Yugi coming to terms with Dark Yugi finally moving on to the afterlife (through his denial of Dark Yugi's attempted usage of this card).
Onto the card's effect text!
Because it debuted so much earlier than other cards, this card's text was written in a much different way at first. My understanding is that it roughly matched the text on Toei's version of the card.
So, in its original form, it would be:
「敵 味方を問わずモンスターの
魂をも蘇生させ味方に
することができる」
Yugipedia editor Deltaneos translates this as "The soul of a monster, regardless of being a friend or foe, can be revived as an ally".
My card draws its text from its later revision in the Battle City arc, where "Resurrection of the Dead" is explicitly stated to Special Summon the monster it revives from a player's Graveyard. This version is less flavorful and reflects the actual game mechanics behind the card better, which is why I went with that.
One last thing: earlier I mentioned this card may have been inspired by certain early Magic: the Gathering cards. Many cards that first appeared in Chapters 9 and 10, the first appearance of Magic & Wizards, had very direct precedents in Magic cards. It's my belief that Kazuki Takahashi drew inspiration from these two cards when deciding to put his ankh symbology into the newly-introduced card game:
(Card images sourced from Scryfall.com.)
Just like that, Takahashi was able to tie together 2 elements of Dark Yugi's character right into one card! And little did he know how far that one card would go.
Once again, thank you for reading! I hope you've all found this as fascinating as I have.
If anyone would like to see a Yugi card from the manga, send an ask or give a response with the card and post about it here!
Indeed, "Time Wizard"- or "Time Magician" here- does count as one of Yugi's cards in this project!
Since we saw Yugi give it to Jonouchi during a flashback in Chapter 71, "Things that Don't Change":
I count this as "a card Yugi owned or used", so it's part of my project.
Additionally, in the fourth chapter of the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Jump Jbooks novel by Katsuhiko Chiba (Yugipedia article link here), we read about Yugi pulling this card, and "Baby Dragon", from a Magic & Wizards pack before using the two cards together in a duel against a shadowy, Kaiba-like figure. (If you want to read this novel, a user here named @shinhoroko translated it and posted all chapters on their blog. Here's a link to that translated fourth chapter, if you're curious about it.) It's unclear if this novel is canon to the manga, but I understand that Chiba consulted with Takahashi when writing this book, so some details of it could at least reflect the manga canon.
You'll notice that I present two versions of this card up top. My first version of the card contained two errors: I accidentally misinterpreted the function of the card in a similar way to Konami, and my text had a typo to boot.
See, specifically in the Duelist Kingdom version of the manga's Magic & Wizards "Standard" ruleset, there's a special penalty rule: if a monster you control is destroyed outside of a monster battle, you lose a number of Life Points equal to half of their combined total original/printed attack value (though the first time it happens in Chapter 66, "The Trap!!", it's more like 1/4 of the combined total original/printed attack value(s) of any so-destroyed monsters instead).
The only time this rule is explicitly called attention to is after Jonouchi's failed use of "Time Magician" in Chapter 90, "Call from the Grave", so it's easy to make that mistake. However, a thorough review of the rules presented in the manga revealed that my card was incorrect, so I ended up revising it, as you see in the second version of the card above.
Info on "Time Magician"'s illustration and card effect under the cut.
Some of you may be surprised to find that "Time Magician" is a Magic Card in the manga, as Konami turned it into a Monster Card in their game.
There are at least three different ways we can confirm this.
First, throughout all of Jonouchi's useages of "Time Magician"- in Chapters 70, 79, 90, and 121/122- he always plays it as a Magic Card, as it stays in effect only when it is played and is sent to the Graveyard immediately once its effect resolves. Furthermore, Jonouchi plays it into his backrow (in Duelist Kingdom, this largely seems to be when players play their cards on the row closest to themselves, or partially/totally off that row on the 5x8/6x8 field grid) much as other players do when they use their own Magic Cards.
Secondly, in his author comment for the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 21" tankobon (released 2 November, 2000), Takahashi shares a list of his "Top 10 Monster Cards", and says this: "9. [Time Magician]. It's actually more like a [magic] card than a monster card, but..."
Finally, in the sourcebook "Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth", released 1 November, 2002, Takahashi has a section dedicated to cataloguing all non-Monster Cards. And here, on page 191, "Time Magician" is specifically noted to be a Magic Card.
Now. Take another look at "Time Magician"'s illustrations above. Compare what you see in both images.
You will notice that the face area on the Konami version is blue and yellow, while the face area shown in the in-manga illustration doesn't have any backing there at all. This seems to be due to a misunderstanding that Konami's illustration team had- "Time Magician"'s face-like features are meant to be floating freely within its ring body!
Yugipedia shows us that Bandai's art team picked up on this. (They also didn't make the same effect mistake that Konami did. Bandai, admittedly, made a lot of mistakes with their interpretation of Magic & Wizards, but to their credit their version of this specific card is much more accurate in these ways!)
Let's take one last look at "Time Magician" and its effect as it's seen in the manga.
It's almost completely blank!
And it's easy to see why: Takahashi plays up this card's effect for dramatic tension constantly, slowly revealing new aspects of it through the Duelist Kingdom arc in a similar manner to what he would do for the god card Ra later in the Battle City arc.
Which is all well and good, but that did give me a little trouble when deciding how this card should function and how its effect should be written.
For instance, the card is said to have two different behaviors, one for when "Baby Dragon" is on-field and one when it isn't. So how does that actually work? Should I rest the "Thousand Dragon" function entirely on "Time Magician", or is it meant to be understood that "Baby Dragon" has a special ability that only activates when "Time Magician" is on-field? I opted for the former, combining it with "Time Magician"'s second behavior - more on that below.
During that second behavior, "Time Magician" is shown to spin a "Time Roulette" wheel, where the player has a 1-in-3 chance of success. Here, success "ages" all on-field monsters, something that isn't necessarily helpful to its controller if they don't have any "long-lived" monsters...however that's defined.
Failure, as marked with a little skull symbol on the Time Roulette wand, sucks all of your monsters (and "Time Magician" apparently!) into an errant time vortex, thereby destroying them.
And, while Yugi claims these to be two different behaviors in Chapter 79, "Time Ticking!!", this only seems to be true the first time the card shows up. Recall that in Chapter 70, "Things that Don't Change", Time Magic just ages up "Baby Dragon" 1000 years as soon as "Time Magician"'s effect activates.
Yet in Chapter 121, "Betting on Victory!!", Jonouchi uses "Time Magician" when "Baby Dragon" is around and suddenly the Time Roulette wheel spins up and has to succeed before "Baby Dragon" ages up- meaning that the two behaviors have now merged into one!
Given all of this, it only made sense to leave this as all one effect, and to make "Thousand Dragon" a sort of implied transformation that could happen to cards like "Baby Dragon". I also interpreted that 1-in-3 Time Roulette effect as a die roll. That seemed the easiest way to translate the ability into real life without involving any sci-fi hologram technology!
Lastly...I believe the anonymous asker mentioned "Kunai with Chain"?
That one is solely a Jonouchi card. Though Jonouchi does use it to aid Dark Yugi's "Elf Swordsman" in Chapter 93, it pretty much stays exclusively in his deck.
I do, of course, have that card. Consider it another bonus:
I decided to interpret its name as "Chained Boomerang".
The card's original text only mentions its activation trigger condition and the fact that a monster can equip it for a 500-point attack boost.
The immobilizing aspect seemed important enough to include (even if it's inconsistent, as in Chapter 121, "Approaching Machine", it's unclear if this binding effect occurs in its use there).
Thus, I decided to apply it in the same way that Konami did on their card. It seemed like a common-sense way to make it work.
In Chapter 181, "Conquer the Sea!!", this card's chain apparently allows a monster to swing around the field if they tie it to a large enough object! I figure this less to be a function of the card and more a consequence of the Duel Disk's virtual fantasy battle simulator system, though.
I do somewhat regret one thing about my rendition of this card. In the manga, its text specifies that you can equip it onto a Monster Card once you activate it, which by my figuring technically means I should technically class this as an "Equip Trap Card" like "Metallization". The function itself is intact, though, and the in-manga card only claims itself to be a "Trap Card", so I ultimately figure that this should be sufficiently accurate.
And there we go! Thanks as always for reading. If anyone would like to see another of Yugi's manga cards- perhaps one of his own Trap Cards, for instance?- feel free to respond or send an ask and I'll present it to you here!
BONUS POST: THE "BLACK MAGICAN GIRL" CARD'S PIVOTAL ROLE IN MY "YUGI MUTOU'S MAGIC & WIZARDS CARDS/DECKS REPLICA PROJECT"
I mentioned in my last post that there was simply too much info about this card and that I couldn't fit all that text there! So instead I've kept all of the manga-related info in that one, and moved everything else about my project here.
Check it out under the cut.
"Black Magician Girl" is a very significant card in my replica project's development history.
Back when I was just starting out on it, I was grappling with how to go about making a universal template for all of the cards I wanted to make. I needed to decide how specifically I wanted to arrange the elements on my cards, and for that I needed a reference to go off of.
Naturally, for that you look through the manga and all of the cards presented there.
And when you do, you realize: there is absolutely no sense of consistency to Takahashi's card layouts. At all.
Here's a link to a Yugipedia gallery of all of the Magic & Wizards card faces in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. You will notice that the placements of card names (are they left aligned? center aligned? how far off of the top of the card are they?), the size of stars, Magic/Trap/etc card supertype line (again: center aligned? right aligned? Sometimes they're on the same line as the name. Sometimes the supertype is under the illustration instead of the name. Is text in parenthesis or brackets?), the placement and spacing of the attack and defense values (both for normal monsters and special ability monsters; also, early manga cards needed to have completely different spacing than later cards), card border sizes (thick, thin...how close were they to the name and frames?) are all variable...not to mention the size of the illustrations. Those were different between each and every depiction of a card in the manga. Illustration frames were radically different from panel to panel, and that would affect the spacing of every other element of the card in turn.
To be clear: I don't fault Takahashi here. He was solely focused on hand-drawing an engaging story for his audience, one ~20-page story a week for roughly 8 years straight. That's a herculean task to ask of anyone, and it's only natural that a pre-digital, organically made work wouldn't be rigid in every way, no matter what kinds of guides and rulers you use when drawing. I give him an immense amount of respect for all the blood, sweat, and tears he poured into his series, and his love for his work shows up in every aspect of what he made.
But it was clear that, if I wanted to stay sane for my own project, I needed to find a single good card to work off of. I wanted it to be based off of one of the layouts shown in the manga, even if I'd inevitably have to tweak it over the course of my project to suit my needs.
And so I poured over the pages of the series to find an in-manga card that would serve as an ideal model for my own cards.
During the process, I filtered it down to 17 options, then 8, then 3. Cards later in the series tended to be better suited as references; even card faces from later in the Duelist Kingdom arc were very messy compared to cards shown in about the early-midpoint of the Battle City arc and onwards.
Soon it came down to 2 different cards. And at the very end, I passed over the Chapter 253 depiction of "Y-Dragon Head" to make the Chapter 164 depiction of "Black Magician Girl" the base model for every card in my project.
And what a great base it was! The spacing on all the elements within the borders of that card was very appealing. It did need some further tweaking- certain parts were off by a few millimeters (the illustration originally favored the left side of the card by 1.3 mm or so, I believe), and the relation between the borders and text would have to be altered to account for the size of the English text compared to the Japanese characters and so on- but ultimately it led to a joy of a work file that was both visually appealing and easy to work with.
In fact, when I made my first proof of concept card face, it seemed only natural to go off of that very base card layout:
INITIAL CARD LAYOUT PROOF-OF-CONCEPT IMAGE
This was an early stage, still very rudimentary compared to later refinements (the size of all text and specific positioning of elements was further changed several times after this, and I later decided on a completely different way of handling the card art compared to what I did here), but I printed this out and it was so encouraging to see the fruits of my labor shape up at this point in the project.
Frankly, there's so much more I could say on my card development process...the extent and variety of all my reference files digital and physical, and of constantly printing out samples in an attempt to figure out the best size for everything, my troubles with how to write card text, and what size to make the fonts so that I could fit everything I needed while still leaving it all legible...but this is enough as it is.
Thank you once again for sticking with me here. I hope you've found everything above to be interesting and insightful.
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Here with the completely unexpected request for Dark Magician Girl, of course :P thanks in advance!
Ah, "Black Magician Girl". A veritable icon of the overall series, on par with other old-time heavy hitters like "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" and "Exodia".
There's a lot of ground to cover here. This card has quite a bit going on with it, and special significance to my project as well.
But let's start with the illustration.
First off: while the colors on "Black Magician Girl" herself haven't changed too much throughout the years, the card illustration initially had a slightly different background.
Crop from the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 19" tankobon cover. Images sourced from Yugipedia; English cover supplied for its greater resolution. Links following: Japanese cover; US English cover. Volume 19 was released on 4 July, 2000 in Japan.
Notice the blue background coloring. Furthermore, the interior of the summoning circle is also filled in with black, and may be intended to reflect the background seen in the overall image (with the white outline star).
A quick note: my project takes its card illustration art from the 2016 color bunkoban release, in which almost all of the manga art was (re)colored to match Konami's cards (or, in rare cases where Konami didn't release a card, the '00 "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters" animation's card art colors).
Lots more under the cut.
While we're here: you can clearly see in this image that "Black Magician Girl" has 5 level stars. This is 1 less star than "Black Magician" is always shown to have in the manga. The number of stars reflects the "student/teacher" relationship the two are said to have in the lore behind the Magic & Wizards card game.
However, on-panel, "Black Magician Girl" always has 6 level stars, the same as her Konami counterpart. And, in the Konami game, "Black Magician" has 7 level stars, so this "inexperienced student/learned teacher" aspect is retained. But in the manga, "Black Magician" keeps its 6 level stars throughout the series' run, so both Magicians have the same number of level stars here.
Back to the art. Let's focus on a different aspect now. Here's how "Black Magician Girl" is represented in her hologram form on this cover:
Crop from the "Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 19" tankobon cover. Image sourced from Yugipedia.
You'll notice that her bardot off-shoulder top's gem has a pentagram on it. This is present in the newer artwork, but is typically censored and removed outside of Japan. What's curious about this is that it's depicted as a pentagram in this, her first color appearance in the manga, but it's later depicted as a hexagram in this color art from 4 December 2000:
Scan from "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art" page 107, by @pharaoh-doll. The image is free to use and cropped here for presentation.
Of course, in the manga, this gem is consistently depicted as a hexagram throughout, much like the one the "Magician of Black Chaos" has on their forehead. It's very curious to me that, outside of the manga's interior, the gem started as a pentagram, became a hexagram briefly (to match the interior), then became a pentagram again for every other appearance...in Japan, at least.
Everywhere else, the gem was 1 of 2 things censored in Konami International's version of this art, alongside "Black Magician Girl"'s, hm, talent.
And now for the card's special ability.
In the Japanese version of this card, when shown on-panel (Yugipedia link to original card face), this card doesn't have its special ability written on it. Nonetheless, it does indeed have one, as Dark Yugi states here during Chapter 105, "Revived Soul!!", during the duel against the alleged "Magician" master user Pandora:
And it's shown to happen during the course of the duel as well, meaning I was more than inclined to write it on the card.
From there it's pretty straightforward. There's not really too much of a difference between my wording of this and Konami's. The "500 attack gain" un-nerf is pretty self-explanatory. And Konami's reason for putting "Magician of Black Chaos" into their effect is because it's a separate card in their game, as opposed to the in-universe Magic & Wizards game where a destroyed "Magician of Black Chaos" would just be represented with a regular "Black Magician" card. (This is also from before "Super Magical Swordsman: Black Paladin", or "Dark Paladin", existed, which is why it's the only in-manga special form of "Black Magician" not accounted for on Konami's card.)
Originally, I had a whole section devoted to this card's role in my development of this card/deck replica project. It proved to be too much for one post, though, so I've instead opted to partition it out into its own Bonus Post. It'll be popping up shortly!
Anyway, thanks for reading! Important cards like this always have a lot behind them.
As always! If there's a Yugi card from the manga you'd like to see, let me know about it via a response or ask and I'll show it to everyone here!
As for the second of @nevertem 's requests, here's "Destruction Dragon Gandora".
While many of the cards that show up in the final arcs have a quirk or two, this one is particularly fascinating just in terms of how it functions.
(Side note: it's been pointed out that the "Gandora" part of this card's name is allegedly an anagram of the word "dragon", or at least how it's pronounced over in Japan. This might mean that the card could be called something like "Destruction Dragon Gandor" here, but ultimately it's kind of a minor point. I did see a Yu-Gi-Oh coloring book render this monster's name as "Gandra" though, so it seems like someone over in Konami's licensing department almost figured this out...or maybe not.)
Let's get the most glaring aspect of this card out of the way: its manga version doesn't have a printed attack or defense value! This is mostly just related to how the card's special ability works, but it's not wholly unprecedented in the manga.
For instance, the card "Spherical Time Bomb: Sphere Bomb" (Yugipedia link to original card face image here) only has a printed attack value, but no defense value. Its own special ability makes it so that the card can't really function in a regular battle; indeed, the printed attack value is just a reference point, showing that it can only destroy monsters with an attack value less than 2900 when its "bomb" ability activates.
Similarly, Dark Malik's card "Vise Devil: Viser Death" (Yugipedia link to original card face image here) has a printed attack value, but a question mark where its defense value should be. That card also has a special ability that largely makes it unable to battle, and whose attack value only exists to reference a card function (here, the amount an affected opponent's monster's ATK value decreases by each turn).
And of course, the god cards "Saint Dragon- The God of Osiris" and "The Sun of God Dragon" (Ra) also have irregular attack and defense value displays as well.
As for the special ability itself, it's pretty drastic. In order to use it, the player will have to pay half of their Life Points, and it affects ALL on-field monsters, even the player's own. And this is AFTER they sacrifice 2 other monsters to bring this to the field in the first place!
There might be some who object to my rendition of how this ability works, in that it just removes monsters from the game (known in modern Yu-Gi-Oh parlance as "Banishing" monsters). Technically, Yugi says in the english translation's dialogue that "Gandora" only destroys monsters, and its name even includes the word "Destruction" in it. However, this doesn't match up with what it actually does in its first appearance.
In Chapter 327, "I Won't Give Up!!", thanks to the effect of Dark Bakura's Magic Card "Cursed Necro Twins", Dark Bakura has no Graveyard. This means that, when his cards are destroyed and would be sent to the Graveyard, they linger on the field instead, largely unable to affect the battle.
Yugi's counter for this is to summon this card while shielding his own monsters with the (unreleased in Konami's game) Magic Card "Magic Barrier".
But if "Gandora" just destroys monsters, that wouldn't help him at all. All destroyed monsters would simply stick around. Logically, being removed from the game is the only thing that could stop Dark Bakura's game plan.
Additionally, the card text on "Destruction Dragon Gandora" says that it first destroys monsters, then removes them from the game (which is why Konami's own card works in the bizarre way that it does). However, as far as I can tell, on-panel all of Dark Bakura's monsters are instead just removed instantly, even the ones that aren't displaced. Thus, on my card I've opted to skip the redundant "destroy" step and make it so this card simply removes all other monsters from the game outright.
There's one more aspect to this card I have to discuss. Dialogue and card text both mention that this ability counts as a "magical attack".
This part of the in-manga "Magic & Wizards" game is unfortunately, thanks to a messy translation, poorly understood by the English-speaking side of the fanbase. The gist of it is: certain broad types of monsters, as well as some specific monsters, have attacks- or in this case, special abilities- that have an additional special property. This property interacts with other cards in unique ways. For instance, "Marshmallon" is immune to normal attacks but vulnerable to "magical attacks", and Bandit Keith's Machine-type monsters all have a special ability called "Anti-Magic Armor", which makes them immune to all "magical attacks".
This is not an irrelevant property of "Gandora"'s special ability. It is explicitly stated in its text that this ability counts as a "magical attack"; Yugi plans around this aspect by activating the Magic Card "Magic Barrier" in response to his own activated special ability, a card that says it makes its controller's monsters "immune to (/deflect all) magical attacks". Additionally, in Chapter 341, "Vs. the Strongest Servant!!", it's shown that activating this combination special ability/magical attack still counts as declaring an attack, and so Dark Yugi is successfully able to activate "Holy Barrier: Mirror Force" in response to this ability!
Truly a unique monster card. In the past, I've speculated that in terms of function, this card almost acts more like a Magic Card. If it was, what would it look like? Perhaps something like this?
In some ways, this might make more sense. But the way Takahashi handled it in the story is definitely more impactful, if you ask me.
Whoops, this ended up being a long one today! Major thanks to you if you stuck around this long!
As always, let me know if you want to see a specific card Yugi used in the manga! I'd be glad to show it here along with a few fun facts.
Can we see Silent Magician, Silent Swordsman, and Gandora?
I'll break this up starting with the "Silent Magician" and "Silent Swordsman Lv. 0". Normally I try to do 1 unique card per post, but I've already learned the hard way that the "Silents" work best as a duo, ha.
Both of these monsters come from the final arc(s), "Pharaoh's Memories/Final Section: Ceremonial Battle". By this time, the process of making monsters and how they translated to other aspects of the overall series was pretty well-defined, so there's not a lot of variance to how these two were depicted by Takahashi over the years.
Nevertheless, there are still a few quirks about them. For instance, both of these cards are shown as being level 4, and start at the same ATK and DEF of 1000 points, even though manga "Silent Swordsman Lv. 0" is, well, titled to be at "level 0". They also both each gain 1 level during certain trigger points during a turn, though the exact purpose of why this is seems to be somewhat incongruous with the fact that, prior to this, level stars mainly mattered in regards to rarity levels and Sacrifice Summons. You could say it comes down to being a measure of strength, and that would be true; yet these cards are more linear about the matter than most before them were. Certainly no other special card forms in the manga have levels like these monster's upgraded forms do!
Speaking of: this is also where the limitations of my cards being only cards shows up. I'll get into this more if anyone ever requests a Fusion, Ritual, or Special Summon-only monster, but: it's starting to become more and more known among fans that specific monsters in the original manga didn't exist as physical cards. The various "stronger" forms of the "Silent" duo fall into this category, so I'll sadly never have a real marker of "Silent Magician" at her full power, nor a "Silent Swordsman Lv. 3-7" .
Thematically, I've always liked what these monsters represented in these final two duels. Takahashi wanted to show that Yugi had grown and gotten stronger over the course of the series, so the fact that these two also 'grow up' and get more powerful throughout their fights is a pretty neat reflection of this. He even had their base forms somewhat resemble regular Yugi's design- a bit on the nose, perhaps, but still a fun touch all the same. In many ways, they really are the centerpieces of Yugi's own final arc deck.
Just for fun, here's a neat art piece with them from "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art". It's nice to see so much of this gang in one place:
Image from page 18 of "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art". Scan by @pharaoh-doll; image is free to use and cropped for presentation.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading! As always, let me know if you want to see a specific Yugi card from the manga and I'll post about it here!
"Pot of Greed" is an esoteric and mysterious card, cloaked in the shadows of ages past, whose true function baffles even the most dedicated of experts to this very day.
...
Nah, played-out jokes aside, this one's got a fairly straightforward history.
"Pot of Greed" is one of a handful of cards that showed up in Konami's game first and Takahashi's manga later. Given that Takahashi had already been collaborating with Konami's design team for years at the time this showed up on-panel in about March '02, it's unclear if he designed at least some of these first or if they came solely from Konami's team.
"Pot of Greed"'s original card face, as seen in "Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters: Vol. 3" released on May 27, 1999. Information and image sourced from Yugipedia.
Its single use in the manga is pretty novel, in relation to the mere utilitarian draw functions it usually provides. In Chapter 256, "God vs. God!! (Obelisk vs. Osiris!!)", Kaiba declares an attack on Dark Yugi's "Saint Dragon- the God of Osiris" with his "The God of Obelisk". In response, Dark Yugi activates his set "Pot of Greed". Previously, "Osiris" had only 3000 attack points compared to "Obelisk"'s 4000 attack, but thanks to "Osiris"'s special ability, it gains 1000 points for every card in Dark Yugi's hand- and so, thanks to "Pot of Greed", it now has 5000 attack points and can win the exchange! Or so Dark Yugi thinks.
Again, this is a fairly drab play by modern standards, but that was definitely a novel twist at the time.
In terms of card creation, well, I didn't have too much trouble with this either. I will say, there was a split second where I considered re-rendering the card's name to something along the lines of "Greedy Pot" or "Avaricious Jar", but ultimately I think that's kind of splitting hairs. "Pot of Greed"'s name is fine as it is.
That's all for today! Thanks as always for reading. And hey- if there's a Yugi-owned manga card you'd like to see, reply or send an ask about it and I'll make a post for it here!
Tangentially-related trivia below the cut.
If you're curious, some of the other Konami-first cards later introduced into the original manga include:
-"Terra the Djinn" ("Terra the Terrible") [Konami debut: 27 March 1999 in "Vol. 2" / Manga debut: 4 October 1999]
-"Angel's Charity" ("Graceful Charity") [Konami debut: 26 August 1999 in "Booster 4" / Manga debut: 8 November 1999]
-"Sea" ("Umi") [Konami debut: March 6, 1999 in "Starter Box Theatrical Limited Release Edition" / Manga debut: 26 June 2000]
-"Hurricane" ("Giant Trunade") [Konami debut: 4 April 2000 in "Magic Ruler" /Manga debut: 17 July 2000]
-"Trap Removal" ("Remove Trap") [Konami debut: March 6, 1999 in "Starter Box Theatrical Limited Release Edition" / Manga debut: 10 September 2001]
All info referenced from Yugipedia; links to individual card pages are provided above.
"Tyhone" also shows up in a (very small) cameo along with "Terra" in Chapter 146, but that card stated out its life as the winner of a fan-made monster contest for the first Yu-Gi-Oh! video game, "Monster Capsule Breed and Battle" on the original Playstation instead. You can read about that on Yugipedia if you want to learn more, though.
Here's "Kuriboh"! A simple little fella through and through.
Don't think it doesn't have a few mysteries surrounding it, though. For instance, in the second photo you'll see Kuriboh's original card art from Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapter 67. It's a pretty rudimentary sort of design, and bears a lot in common with a different card seen in Chapter 37, "Critter" (known as Sangan in Konami's game). There's been a lot of speculation on whether or not that monster was reworked into Kuriboh or if the two merely share a lot of design aspects (and also a background, apparently).
From the original leading color page for Chapter 95. Here's a mystery card that might be either "Kuriboh" or "Critter"!
By the time of Chapter 104, Kuriboh gained the specific look you see in the main image. Interestingly, Konami's art seems to sort of reflect a halfway point between the early rougher Kuriboh design and its later, more refined form.
As for the color scheme, while both seemed to exist side-by-side very early on, Takahashi seems to have settled on the purple very quickly. Take a look at this depiction of Kuriboh on the cover of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 12 tankobon (released on March 4, 1999):
Image sourced from Yugipedia.
Though the method of coloring (and the medium) were different at the time, the color itself is very much intended to be the same.
And even after the anime "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters" debuted on April 18, 2000, and used the brown/green colorscheme for Kuriboh, Takahashi stuck to this colorscheme for a long time. See: this volume 18 tankobon cover (released April 28, 2000):
Image sourced from Yugipedia.
See also this Kuriboh in the color page from the January 1, 2001 issue of "Weekly Shonen Jump" #1620:
This scan from "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art" page 107 was done by @pharaoh-doll. The image is free to use and cropped here for presentation.
(The scan shown here is unfortunately very blue-tinged, but other scans show it being as purple as the above images).
As far as I can tell, Takahashi colored it purple even up into the late '10s/early '20s, as seen in some of his Instagram posts. (Link leads to a tumblr rehost, as the original account has been private for a long time.)
The other aspect of note here is Kuriboh's special ability. It's well-known that Kuriboh explodes. But it's very tough to define what that means from a card game mechanic perspective. Do Kuriboh's explosions allow it to destroy other monsters? Not necessarily. Do they stop it from being destroyed by other cards? No. Do they stop attacks? Chapter 104 somewhat implies that's the case, but it can also be taken as the fact that since there are an infinite number of defense mode Kuribohs on field (thanks to "Multiply"), Kaiba effectively has no way to affect Dark Yugi's Life Points, and that's what's actually protecting him. So do they stop special abilities? Again, chapter 131 kinda says that Kuriboh's explosions 'blind' "Thousand-Eyes Sacrifice", stopping it from targeting "Magician of Black Chaos" with its absorbing/paralyzing ability. But that only makes sense within the virtual fantasy simulation system that the Battle Boxes have, and not as a mechanic in a card game.
Ultimately, the ability really only makes sense from a storytelling perspective, so I figured the best way to go about this is to be straightforward about how we see it used on-panel. Part of me wishes I could have found a more sound game mechanic explanation for this, but in the end this is accurate enough that I'm satisfied with it.
Phew, that was a long one! Once again, thanks for taking interest in these funny little monsters. If anyone wants to see another one of Yugi's manga cards, let me know and I'll post it here!
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The second of the anonymous asker's requests. This is the one called "Gaia the Fierce Knight"- in this set, the "Dark Knight Gaia".
If I may share a little bit about my process here...you might look at Gaia's face on the left and think "Hmm, that's a little messy". And personally, I would agree.
Often, deciding what art to use for a card was a matter of tradeoffs and compromises. And that's for best-case scenarios; many cards had only 1 useable illustration, so often I had to work with the material I had.
In this case, there were 5 candidates for the Gaia card. Here's what the rest looked like:
Chapter sources, starting from the top-left and going clockwise: Chapter 83, "Pursuit of Light!!"; Chapter 37, "Deathmatch!!" (the card's first appearance); Chapter 114, "The Bewitching Mai!!"; Chapter 67, "Ultimate Perfect Form!!".
Right off the bat: 3 of these pieces have the wrong color trim on Gaia's breastplate (it was always supposed to be red, as you'll soon see). 2 of them are partially blocked. And every image smaller than the first one had armor detailing that would get muddy when I upsized them.
Were it not for those factors, my preference would have been to use the top-left, if just because its large size meant it would fare better after being resized.
Another reason I favored the top-left is because of its resemblance to the first full-color image we have of the Gaia card, from the 1998 Chapter 95 full color page shown in "Weekly Shonen Jump":
Chapter 95, "The Terror of the Dungeon"
Part of me wishes I could get a full version of the above art just for the original color of the horse alone. Say what you will, but I've never liked the fact that Gaia's horse was purple even back when I was a kid.
And, in a strange twist of fate- this Gaia also has a messed-up face, as well as armor with trim whose red coloring is overpowered by the yellow background. Go figure, huh?
A little extra theory to chew on here. In "Dark Knight Gaia"'s first appearance in Chapter 37 "Deathmatch!!" during the Death-T arc, Kaiba says something when he sees the Gaia card. In Viz's translation, he says:
Kaiba: "Gaia the Fierce Knight! The most powerful card in the warrior class!"
In the original version, he instead says "Dark Knight Gaia" is the most powerful card in the Magical Knight class, which is a different type entirely, and one that's exclusive to the manga.
Why is this a big deal? Because, in the Japanese version, there are apparently 4! different Knight classes. There's a catch-all Knight-type- Jonouchi's decks are said to contain a lot of these, in addition to Warrior-types. Chapter 62, "Countdown!", also claims that there are 2 additional Knight-types- Dark Knight-types, that can be classed with "Black Magic" Magic-Users, and White Knight-types, that can be classed under "White Magic" Magic-Users.
Furthermore, the ritual Magic Card "Chaos Ritual"- used in Chapter 118 to turn "Dark Knight Gaia" into the "Chaos Soldier" (or Black Luster Soldier)- states that, after you sacrifice 2 different 1500-attack monsters, "The power of chaos dwells in the Dark Knight".
So does that mean that Takahashi changed his mind and got rid of the Magical Knight class, retroactively turning "Dark Knight Gaia" into a Dark Knight-type?
I suspect not.
In Chapter 120, Jonouchi summons a card called "Magical Knight Giltia". Curiously, despite being called a knight, it has something called a 'magical attack'- an attribute shared with a few types, such as Magic-Users and the aforementioned Knights aligned with them.
Why would this be the case? Is it maybe a Dark Knight-type? A White Knight-type? Or, perhaps, it's all in the name. What if "Magical Knight Giltia" is a Magical Knight-type, as its name states?
If so, that would mean that the Magical Knight-type still exists into the Duelist Kingdom arc. And if that's the case, Gaia could still be a Magical Knight-type after all.
Why then does "Chaos Ritual" refer to a Dark Knight? I suspect that the "Dark Knight" part of the card isn't referring to Gaia's type- it's referring to its card name, "Dark Knight Gaia". Notice that it doesn't specify "class" or "type" after this instance of "Dark Knight".
This does lead to a very funny situation where the only two known Magical Knight-types are "Dark Knight Gaia" and maybe "Magicial Knight Giltia", while there are two other Knights with no known members- and the one card with "Dark Knight" in its name is explicitly stated to be a different type!
Anyway, that's enough for now. One last thing: it's pretty widely-known that Kazuki Takahashi took a lot of inspiration from early Magic: the Gathering cards when making his own. My last theory for today is that Takahashi drew inspiration from the card "Holy Armor" when designing Gaia:
Image source: Scryfall.com.
And that's all for today! Thank you for reading this far. As always, if there's a Yugi-owned manga card you'd like to see, let me know via reply or ask and I'll make a post about it here!
Would love to see Celtic guardian and Gaia the fierce knight!
I'll tackle the first of anonymous's requests here. This card is known here as "Celtic Guardian"- a name that's very fun to say. Though some out there render its original name as "Elf Knight" or "Elf Guardian", personally I tend to agree with those who call this card the "Elf Swordsman".
In terms of art: many of Yugi's Duelist Kingdom deck monsters suffer from having very small art boxes in the manga, which means their illustrations don't resize well. Though "Elf Swordsman"'s typical illustration (as seen in the top image) is better than most, the source art just lacks the kind of fine details that others have.
Luckily, this is not the only art of "Elf Swordsman" out there. The original full-color page for Chapter 95, found in the September 1998 issue of "Weekly Shonen Jump", contains a much higher-detail version of this illustration. Said illustration even has that card's original colorscheme! And so it gets a variant card of its own in my deck, as seen in the above image.
Kazuki Takahasi seems to favor it over the standard one. So much so that the official 2008 Anniversary card he illustrated draws a lot from that earlier '98 colorscheme:
This "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art" page 11 scan was done by @pharaoh-doll. The image is free to use and cropped here for the sake of presentation.
Secondly- I regret to inform you all that these two renditions of the card you see above are now outdated. Originally, I was under the impression that "Elf Swordsman" was a simple ability-less Monster Card, just like its official counterpart.
Many months after I printed these, I found out that, in the Japanese manga, this elf had a special ability all along!
Apparently, in the manga's original text for Chapter 62, "Countdown!!", Dark Yugi states that this card can't be affected by the illusions of Pegasus's "Illusionist No-Face". This was a line of dialogue that was changed in Viz's official translation to instead say, as their version puts it:
Dark Yugi: "The illusionist doesn't have any special advantage against this card!"
...Which means something a little different, I think!
The 2002 sourcebook "Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth" reinforces this, explicitly stating that "Elf Swordsman"'s special ability causes it to be immune to illusions. I tracked down a copy of this sourcebook and double-checked the line myself to be sure.
Thus it fell on me to translate this idea into something that makes sense as a game mechanic. I had to decide: in Magic & Wizards, what are 'illusions', and how can a card be immune to them?
It turns out that there are two aspects of M&W that fit this bill. First of all, per Chapter 62 there are subtypes of Magic-User-type monsters called "Illusionists". They're strong against "Black Magic" subtypes and weak against "Demon" subtypes. Often, these monsters have special abilities that affect other monsters. "Dark-Eyes Illusionist" is an example of an "Illusion" subtype Magic-User monster with such a special ability.
Additionally, there's an entire class of cards in the manga's Magic & Wizards game that the real-life official version doesn't have, called "Illusion Cards". We see one right in Chapter 62, a card called "Entrancing Eye" (the official game calls this card "Eye of Illusion"), and another one shows up in Chapter 97, "Mimic Illusionist" (which is called "Copycat" here).
My idea, then, is that "Elf Swordsman"'s on-card special ability should read something like this: "This monster cannot be affected by an Illusionist monster's special ability, or by an Illusion Card." That should cover the scope of it in a way that makes sense as a card game mechanic, I think.
The updated card is all ready to go, and I'll post an image of it here when I receive it later!
Whew, that was a technical one. Once again, hope you all enjoyed this! If there are any other Yugi manga cards you want to see, let me know and I'll post about them here!
@businesstycoon27 requested I show off the "Mystical Elf" card, so here it is, in its original form as "Holy Elf". I've also included its Konami counterpart as a point of comparison.
This card didn't see too much in the way of changes when Konami made their version. Even its art from its very original appearance in "The Cards With Teeth (Part 2)" isn't radically different, as you can see here:
Art of "Holy Elf", as seen in its first appearance in Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapter 10.
It did, however, have a special ability in Chapter 76, "The Legendary Dragon", that allowed it to boost another monster's attack points by 800 after "Holy Elf" had been in attack mode for one turn.
Konami opted not to include this on its official card (though it did show up in a limited form in the Game Boy games of the era), so "Holy Elf" became a normal Monster Card there.
I included that ability here. I also would've liked to mark its status as a "White Magic" Magic-User, as stated in the type chart shown in Chapter 62, "Countdown!!", but in the end I opted to keep that info off the card to preserve the manga's clean card layout.
As for "Gift of the Mystical Elf", that's not one of Yugi's cards and thus technically outside the scope of this project.
BUT! I do have that card, remade in its original form, and will show it to you here.
In the manga, it's known as "Holy Elf's Blessing", and it's a card Kaiba used during the Duelist Kingdom arc. There, it showed up starting in Chapter 103, "Hang in There!!". Its effect in the manga is even simpler than Konami's card, which was buffed in comparison. (For those who aren't familiar with it, Konami's version gives the player 300 Life Points for every monster they have on their side of the field.)
This card is also interesting for another reason- it creates a sort of idea for how "Holy Elf", and perhaps "White Magic" Magic-User cards in general, are meant to be understood in the in-universe Magic & Wizards card game. It seems that they're intended to buff or heal monsters and players, similar to how White Mages work in old Final Fantasy games or healers in other old RPGS.
Unfortunately my upsizing process on this art didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped- the original was pretty low-resolution, so some details got lost or muddled no matter how much I messed with it- but ultimately it came out cleaner than I feared it might.
Anyway, that's all I can share for now. Hope you all found this interesting! And if anyone else has any more of Yugi's cards they want to see, just respond or send an ask and I'll post about it here!
