Seto Kaiba as an incest victim.

There is a huge trigger warning for this one. I would like to discuss a really discomforting and bleak topic that has been on my mind a lot. We never learn exactly what Seto endured during those six years or before, and I don't think we need to know exactly what it was to empathize. It's enough to know that he was hurt badly, which is clearly reflected in his actions throughout the canon. However, given that incest is widely considered an unspeakable topic or a fetish, I would like to discuss this interpretation of Seto as an incest victim. This is not canon and is not necessarily an hc I always hold, but it is one possible interpretation of Seto's character among many.

Clearly, Seto was badly hurt and mistrusting at the orphanage. However, I will not be focusing on his backstory with his exploitative relatives. Instead, I'm thinking about the dynamic between Seto and Gozaburo.

I know they are not biologically related, but I don't think it's an overstatement to use the word "incest." In the novel Lolita, Dolores Haze uses this word when talking about the dynamic between herself and her abusive captor and stepfather, Humbert Humbert, even though they are not biologically related. Many victims of abuse by non-related parent figures call it incest because the dynamic is fundamentally the same. Moreover, Seto considered that man his father in every way. In the Japanese version, he called him "otousan," which means "Dad" (not "Father" or "Sir"), addressing him more informally than Noa did because Noa called him "chichihue." He even says “that monster of a father was the only family I ever had.”

There are different kinds of incest.

Incest does not have to be physical; it can also be emotional, which is just as damaging. Gozaburo isolated Seto from his only other relative, Mokuba, and used him as leverage against Seto. Gozaburo made himself the center of Seto’s world and framed their relationship as a rivalry rather than an adult protecting a child. Therefore, while dominating Seto as a child, Gozaburo also treated Seto emotionally as an adult. Gozaburo had Seto participate in the world of business and expected adult-like capabilities from him, blurring the boundaries between adult and child. We know that Seto’s main way of relating to others is through games and rivalry. Gozaburo first exploited and warped this trait.

We see that Seto often has strong, almost eroticized reactions to feelings of rivalry, as he does toward Atem. Fans have often interpreted his feelings toward him as romantic. Nevertheless, his emotions are very strong.

The strongest evidence regarding the physical aspect is the loaded symbols used in the manga during Mokuba’s Death-T flashback (implying that Mokuba witnessed this). We see Seto, dressed in white and wearing a collar, being threatened with a riding crop and forced to do academic work. These symbols are loaded because, although Yu-Gi-Oh! is a manga for children and teens (even in its grittiest early incarnation, it was still directed at teens) collars, riding crops, and similar objects are not commonly associated with abusive child rearing and physical discipline like for example belts (and often the line between child physical abuse and CSA is quite thin, given that children are routinely subjected to practices like spanking which would be seen as sexual when done to adults), but rather with BDSM, (which is a consensual practice among adults.) In this context, however, it would be sadistic child sexual abuse. Gozaburo's smile in that panel shows satisfaction, as if he is deriving sadistic, erotic enjoyment from the punishment he is inflicting.

It’s deeply allegorical, but I think Seto’s whole arc could be read as a complex allegory of incestous abuse.

When we first meet Seto in the manga, he is still visibly reeling from Gozaburo's suicide. Seto’s forced witnessing of Gozaburo's suicide was a form of emotional control to ensure that he would always be the center of Seto’s life and that he could never move on in my interpretation. (As well as to reinforce to Seto that "losing is death”.) Seto struggled all his life to form connections. He struggled at the orphanage, but this made the wound much deeper because the only person who had spoken his language of games and rivalry instead of asking him to conform to a perfect family image as other adopting families might have (even if it was to exploit these things), had hurt and abandoned him. As much as Seto could tell himself he hated Gozaburo, he was the only adult figure in his life during his formative years (ages 10–16) who had a significant impact. Seto relied on him for food, clothing, and a roof over his head, even though Gozaburo always reminded him that it was conditional. For a still-developing adolescent, losing a father is devastating, both emotionally and materially. In the words of KT: “To Kaiba, he was a father, but he just wasn’t a «typical» father. When he carried out his administration shift, Seto didn’t think that Gozaburo would die. Now without a foe due to Gozaburo taking his own life, he slowly started to lose his sanity.”

If there is incestous enmeshment involved, it’s even more complicated.

I would like to remind you that Seto is one of the few characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! original cast who is shown to lack romantic or sexual interest in anyone. This could be due to many reasons: asexuality, homosexuality with internalized homophobia, etc. However, it could also be because his sexuality was so warped during it’s formative years that, as is common among incest victims, he can only associate arousal with his abuser and now he cannot feel those feelings anymore since his abuser is gone. Or all of those things.

Of course we have one exception for which he feels very intensely. Those feelings are not necessarily “erotic” but not platonic either, and that is Atem as I’ve said.

The thing is, their bond obviously evolves into something more. However, one of the main obstacles to healthy Prideshipping is that: Seto explicitly projects Gozaburo onto Atem. Kazuki Takahashi has commented on this fact.

“He even ended up receiving the Penalty Game, Experience of Death, from Yugi, I believe. By doing that, the loser of the game believed that they had to experience certain death. That is what started Seto’s manic obsession toward «games» and «death,» no doubt. Seto normally battles his father complex. With him just going ahead and dying, he wasn’t able to score a complete and utter defeat against his father. However, maybe meeting Yugi shifted his objective”

KT explicitly tells us that Seto has a complex. While I don’t think he meant it was necessarily related to incestuous abuse, this passage is helpful in understanding why one might interpret it that way. During Seto and Atem’s first meeting, Seto admits that he has been looking for an “extreme game.” This occurs shortly after Gozaburo’s suicide, suggesting that Seto has been experiencing a void and seeking a repetition of those painful dynamics. He experiences the harrowing Experience of Death. This further erodes his sanity, leading to his single-minded obsession with winning over Atem and his desire to interact with him. This blend of complicated feelings is common among victims of abuse who seek to destroy the pain caused by the abuse while still desiring the abuser. (Note: I am not calling Atem Seto’s abuser. I am talking about Seto’s projection of his abuser onto Atem, which sometimes leads Seto to disregard Atem’s individual humanity due to his own trauma.)

While Atem Mind Crushes him after Death-T, that is another affirmation of “losing is death” (the only validation Gozaburo gave him before leaving forever, for which Seto thanked him, “thank you for teaching me”) in Seto’s mind, that now recognizes Atem as a mirror of what he had been looking for in those months after Gozaburo’s suicide. He expresses the desire to fight him again (“his battling was splendid,” ect.) Even knowing that it is also dangerous, because harming each other was the dynamic he and Gozaburo had. I’m not saying this is all there was to it, and their bond obviously evolves into something much more on both parties, and of course this is only my interpretation. But in this interpretation, this cannot be discounted as one side of why Seto *instantly* fixates so much on Atem.

In Battle City, we see Seto equalizing winning over Atem with winning over Gozaburo and his trauma.

This is better understood if we think that in Seto’s mind, his attachment to Atem is supposed to replace the void the attachment he had to Gozaburo had left, again at least initially. It is not at all rare for incest victims to feel like they will be forever “in love” with their abuser, while at the same time hating them. It’s not an easy thing to think about, and it is very possible for victims to heal and have bonds that are not just based on a continuation of being in love with the relative who has sexually abused them (what I mean is that even with Atem it could be healthy, please do not think I have anything against Pride T-T or can only think of it darkly), but it is also a real dynamic that exists. This also brings us to Seto’s obsessiveness in Transcend Game and DSOD. Other interpretations are possible and probably more correct, but I am just advancing a possible one.

We see Seto’s neglect of Mokuba, and the self destructive nature of his pursuit, show that he is still not fine, and I do not expect him to be given the fact that he is only 18 and has lost the only other bond he had, which was complicated by the projection of his incestous abuse on said bond.

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