Adventures in Card Game Feels

early manga redraws. anyone down to clown w/ me

if there's one thing about yugioh dm that i think about constantly, it's this fucking panel. it haunts me. It contains multitudes. the manga never fully digs into it, but it casts a shadow over Yami no Yugi and makes his entire character like 30000% more interesting and angsty.

Like. fuck. Imagine your name is Yugi Mutou and you're having the worst day of your life and a guy just threatened to stab you if you didn't pay him money you didn't have. And as you fiddle with the puzzle you've worked on for 8 years, suddenly this sense of confidence rushes over you. You suddenly know you don't have to take that guy's bullying lying down. Suddenly you feel this swell of knowledge and understanding and you realize you can take him down with his own greed. And you do it.

And then again, something happens to the people you care about, and you find yourself doing something about it. Over and over again, every time something bad happens, you use your wits and instinct to cause the perpetrators to be punished and your loved ones to be protected.

But then slowly....slowly....something starts to occur to you.

Are you actually Yugi Mutou?

Things aren't quite fitting together. You have memories of being Yugi Mutou. But something about them just doesn't quite click together. Were you actually there before that night that bully threatened you with a knife? Or did you just think you were? Have you actually been around those people you feel like you care about all the time, or are those just wisps of memories of someone else spending time with them?

If you're not Yugi Mutou, then...who are you? You only remember being Yugi Mutou. But you also feel that there's someone else who is also Yugi Mutou, who might have been Yugi Mutou before you were.

Somehow, you start to get the sense that you might be a shadow of something else entirely.

But you put that aside. Because despite what you suspect, despite not knowing who you are, the people you know you care about seem to also care about you. Even the other Yugi trusts and cares about you. So maybe it's all right, and this is normal, and this is what you're supposed to be and do. So you keep protecting them, those people you care about, including the other Yugi.

Except them you keep running into those items again, ones like the one you built, like the one that seemed to awaken this other side of you -- or was the the first time you were ever actually awake? And the people with those items hurt you and the people you care about. One of them seems to contain another mind -- like you, kind of? Only this one is hurting their hose, this one is cruel - except maybe, haven't you also been cruel? Haven't you been doing something similar to people who put your loved ones and your other self (your host) at risk?

And then things continue, and you try to fight and protect the people you care about, even if it means throwing someone else's life away, and the other Yugi....won't let you. And the other Yugi says...he's scared of you.

And then this. Then Pegasus drops those little words: "the evil intelligence inside the Millennium Items."

And you know you're not Yugi Mutou anymore. You never were. You are some strange, dangerous ghost from an ancient relic, who woke up with his memories and used his body to hurt other people.

Who exactly are you?

Kaiba of all characters becomes the character who now has to teach Yugi the lesson that the past is important. Which is something he struggled with while Atem was "alive". And while he is aggressive and self-absorbed, Kaiba also learns to be softer and kinder. That moment when Atem returns is there to show Yugi that Kaiba was right. Kaiba finally got the lesson and was able to be there for Yugi in a moment were Yugi almost stopped believing.

As we can see above, this haircut:

Is dark in the back, blached in the front

split into minimum two groupings: Body and Bangs

Spiked in the back, likely with the use of gel or styling mousse

Obviously this is an anime, and as other features such as eyes, ears, and legs are exaggerated I feel it is safe to interpret the length of hair as exagerrated as well.

This is a convenient assumption because otherwise, spiking shoulder-lrngth hair into seven (minimum) rigid vertical spikes would be impossible to maintain.

Assuming a real-life Yugio haircut could exist as inspiration got this style, I imagine a haircut that is either short and spiked in the back with natural bangs, or long in the back and textured with shorter bangs to frame the face. Either way, either the front is bleached, or the additional blond spikes in the back could be interpreted as highlights throughout the darker, perhaps natural hair.

Given these criteria, I have narrowed the possibilities dow to these three hair styles:

For research purposes please enter your interpretations to the poll attached below

Yugi and Atem have slightly different hair, with Atem having a more extreme version of Yugi's hair. However, it is important to note that there is likely no actual physical difference in Yugi and Atem's appearances. His close friends, before finding out Atem existed, simply noticed that Yugi seemed more confident, not that he got taller, voice changed or hair changed. So that might not be diegetic, but a difference for the audience's sake.

It's also worth noting that anime tends to exaggerate things, particularly hairstyles. So in reality, Yugi's hair may be less like this:

But more like this:

The show itself had many collaborations with Visual Kei performers and bands, too, so it's pretty obvious how the series takes inspiration from the culture aesthetically as well. You can see it in some of the fashion choices, too, not just the hairstyles, as well as how visual kei took cues from and overlapped with goth and punk styles as well:

It's the costume designer in me, but I always think it's important to remember and reference the period and location something was made when you're trying to figure out why it was designed the way it was, and how to realistically recreate it.

Completeing this felt like a fever dream. But the good kind.

I'm in my annual YU-Gi-Oh era again, help

And the version with less effects