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Oct. 14th, 2005 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spokeMaybe a week or so back, a discussion came up in ptdc wherein ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shusu mentioned that Seto Kaiba is the foil to Yugi's hero.
Which got me thinking about the way things seem to work in the manga, and how a character's status as good or evil depends on what kind of friend they are. (Rather than how they behave outside of their friendships, but that would be another rant)
The whole first run of the manga actually deals more with the foursome of Yugi, Anzu, Jounouchi and Honda actually becoming friends with each other than it is anything else - and Yami no Yugi only 'officially' enters the friendship circle after they think they've lost Honda. The bulk of the time, we only see 'friendship' defined within the circle of that foursome, as it slowly expands over the course of the story.
It's Yugi, being the main character, who sets the standards of friendship. With Jounouchi... I have to admit I have a little bit of trouble describing him. It’s so obvious on the surface, and then to stop and think in any depth - he is such a tangled mess. Granted, given his background of divorced parents and his being stuck with the alcoholic Dad (all Dads in YGO seem to be absentees or jerks) he wasn’t going to be Mr. Sunshine. Mostly it’s that, as Seto describes it once, he has ‘glass confidence’ - so he attempts to protect himself by being a loudmouthed, bullying, arrogant jerk. In the beginning, his problem is mostly that he’s jealous of Yugi - here’s this kind, relatively innocent guy with no apparent need to fight to maintain his ego the way he has to. He thinks to himself that Yugi 'talks like a girl'. Then Yugi pulls the rug out from under him, because he gets the living daylights beaten out of him, protecting himself and Honda. It just totally shocks him that someone so wussy would take that kind of punishment. As he spends more time with Yugi, he starts to relax, and his strength as a friend shows - mostly in that he is a lot like Yugi. Always up for a new game and ready to make a new friend (but that will come in later) It just slowly becomes clear that he is nearly as big a game-loving dork as Yugi - there is a willingness to be utterly silly that those two have, and the others don't. Anzu and Honda get their own versions of embarrasedness at times over Yugi and Jou, and their Dork Fits. ^_^ He just never had a friend he didn’t think would make fun of him for it.
But he did have a friend - Honda. Honda’s problem has more to do with sharing, at first. Jou is quite possibly the first friend he had, and someone he looks up to. He knew Jounouchi in lower grades the way Yugi knew Anzu, and noticed that even though Jou was in a rough gang (it’s Honda who informs us that Jou has a police record) he never beat up on the smaller and younger guys. Even in bullying Yugi, it’s more vicious harassment - they don’t actually try to hurt him. So first there is the problem that Yugi, in Honda’s opinion, is an interloper. Then there’s this - Honda’s biggest requirement for friendship is that you have each other’s backs. He missed Yugi getting the crap beat of him that first time, which leads to Jou trying to match-make them as friends. Playing intermediary and trying his hardest to convince each of them that the other is cool, you want to be friends, etc. It's only after they nearly all get expelled due to Jou's insane friendship-making scheme that Honda really accepts Yugi as a friend, and that was because he saw Yugi put himself on the line as they each tried to take the blame and keep the others from being expelled, and keep Honda from losing his chance with the girl he was trying to impress. This is the only time yet that I've seen Yami no Yugi come out without some form of game on the line - to drive off the teacher so they don't get expelled. It has, I think, more to do with Honda's sense of dignity, contrasted against Jou's focus on physically having one's back. The nice thing here is the way that compliments his best strength as a friend - he forgives people mouthing off and doing stupid things, mostly because he's aware he does it himself. That shows first in his telling Yugi and Anzu about Jou's gangsta past, and culminates in Death-T, when Jou is angsting about having been such a jerk because he didn't like himself, while Honda agrees. I suspect their friendship is rooted in that, because somebody had to be the first to forgive Jou being an ass.
Anzu actually has a bit of a temper, and has been seen decking Jounouchi - granted, he did deserve it for lifting her skirt. >:P But she’s proud in her own right, and there is a bit of hesitance to accept the new boys as friends - at first it’s more of a ‘if Yugi feels that way’ reaction. Part of the problem is that she knew them as bullies first, and didn’t understand why they acted that way, which is why Death-T is important - she needed to hear their reasons for being jerks as much as they needed to say it. Anzu is blindingly honest about her emotions and does not get self-deception so well. It is, fitting in with the underlying puzzle metaphor, the last piece she needed to ‘get’ them. But because Anzu is so honest, and tough enough to argue with them and throw punches if she has to, it makes them that much more comfortable around each other. At some point a bit before Death-T, she really stops being 'the girl' and is treated like one of the boys - otherwise I'm not sure they'd have felt comfortable enough to talk about things the way they did.
So their circle is complete. Even if it is a square. ;p
Seto. Appears to have no friends. None. Seto has minions. And Mokuba. And during Death-T, it’s one of the elements that seems to confirm Seto’s utter villainy that he isn’t even nice to Mokuba. Made that much worse by the fact that even then it’s obvious Seto is the center of Mokuba’s world - how could he not respond to such devotion?! Oh, something to do with essentially deciding he was going to take over the parent role after theirs had both died, and the other relatives betrayed them. If no one else will take care of them, he will. Never mind Gozaburo, who ensured that at some point Seto really went off the deep end. It changes the dynamics when Yugi-tachi learn, after fighting their way through Death-T, that Seto really was crazy. Not just exceptionally cruel and evil and enjoying said qualities, but genuinely unbalanced. Anzu is heartbroken, Yami no Yugi actually goes out of his way to assure Mokuba that it wasn’t permanent and Seto would wake up. He explains that he only used a Penalty Game to make Seto solve the puzzle of his heart, putting the pieces back together without anyone pressuring him and making him screw it up this time.
I don’t even know what to say to that, because frankly the way Yami no Yugi treats Seto makes me want to take a large blunt instrument to his spiky little head. He seems to object to Seto's sticking to his own path - everytime Seto does something that defies what Yami would have him do, we get that KAIBA! reaction, like a massive twitch. Often followed by lecturing, a Penalty Game, or the threat thereof. Rar.
Then we get to Duelist Kingdom, and we’ll never really know if it would have worked the way Yami no Yugi meant it to - because Seto didn’t wake up when he was done, he woke up when he sensed the Blue Eyes White Dragon being played by that creepy little ventriloquist. He then proceeds to come rescue Mokuba, and rejects Yugi’s wide eyed attempt at friendship - in favor of pursuing Pegasus' defeat single-handedly. The closest he gets to friendly behavior is when Yami no Yugi comes out to snarl at him for making Yugi cry - and Seto proceeds to talk shop with him about why it has to be Seto to defeat Pegasus. Otherwise, he continues in his behavior much as before, rejecting and mocking any attempt by the others to make friends.
It's after Pegasus is defeated, and all souls captured have been freed, that we see a real change in his behavior. Starting over? Mokuba is actually a better 'friend' than Seto, although he wouldn't admit to calling them friends either - Seto truly would’ve walked off that island without a backward glance, it's Mokuba who acts as an intermediary between the gang and his big brother.
Then we get to Ryou. By the time we meet Ryou, he is alone. We know very little about what friendships he had, and it comes down to this - he was a game master for a tabletop rpg, and Bakura sealed all his friends' souls into the pieces of their characters. We also know that he had an intensely loving relationship with his sister Amane, because he is seen writing a letter to her - and she is dead. That is actually comparable to Seto and Mokuba (he first meets Seto in D.K., and is reluctant to join in the badmouthing because someone who cares so for his brother can't be all bad) and Jounouchi and Shizuka. The one time I've seen him step in to 'fight' on behalf of the gang was when he almost told Seto about Jounouchi's sister and her eyes. >.> But as a friend? He is constantly just a bit on the outside... the gang held their hands out to him once, that I know of, and they were drawn into the rpg with Bakura - after which it always seems to be Ryou making the first move. When they show up depressed about Grandpa and he has to ask what's going on, when the decision is made that they all should go to D.K. It's Ryou who says he should go, and that's because he wants answers about the Items.
The problem here is that Ryou and the rest of the gang may be mutually failing each other as friends - Ryou needs to be trusted. The attitude makes sense - as the game master, he would have had to keep secrets from his own friends in the course of the game, and they would have had to trust him to be playing, rather than being a jerk.
In the end of Monster World game, when he has essentially committed suicide to let them finish Bakura's avatar, he turns around and thanks Yugi and the others for trusting him. But in other ways, he doesn't quite trust him. The suicide-via-forcing dice to explode was desperate, a last ditch tactic - and the game leading up to that feels more like Ryou shielding the others while he tries to take Bakura down from the inside. He fights for them, but on his own. And it's very much like that screen of being the game master never drops for him - he listens and watches, helps out when he feels he can - but he never really throws in with the others, never lays things on the line the way they do. Case in point, I think he puts the Ring back on because of that - he doesn't believe the gang will figure a way out of the Paradox Brothers' maze. He feels like he, and therefore Bakura, has to do something.
From the side of Yugi-tachi... they continually underestimate him. To see the way they reacted in Monster World, they rescued him - he just assisted somewhat. They constantly inform him of things - like Shadi, and any tidbits they've learned about the Items - only as these things come up, rather than telling him as soon as he makes it clear that he really wants to know. Which he stresses, before he's ever put the Ring back on. Yugi's reaction? Leaning over him, in this pose that somehow conveys this gently condescending big-brotherness, and warning him not to put the Ring back on! >.<
And quite frankly, Ryou is not stupid enough to miss the way they're treating him - the question is, will he forgive them for it or hold a grudge?
So we've got Yugi, with his core group of friends - and Yami no Yugi, who slowly becomes friends with Yugi's friends, treating Jounouchi almost like an equal, Honda rather like a soldier ( seriously, it's this nodding-acquaintance and exchanging of needs for orders) and Anzu like, um. OMG it's a girl she's scary! Although he does improve slowly, but... Someday I need to go into depth in the triangle that is Yugi-Yami no Yugi-Anzu. I really do. He has rescued her and then stared at her holding his arm like she is getting cooties on him. XD
And those two are Our Hero(s).
Then we have Seto, who is an island unto himself and Mokuba, and consistently rejects that any other way exists. Except that he slowly comes around to acknowledging that the gang's way both exists and works, except he's still not interested. *lalala, you can't get Friendship cooties on meeee! lalala* Mokuba is his friend, though - and business partner. What defines Seto as Foil and Bakura as Villain - Seto never does the one thing that Bakura does consistently - he never manipulates people. The thing in the anime where he lies to Mokuba in order to use him to get to Gozaburo, to get control of the company? Never happened.
That sort of thing is Bakura’s M.O.
From the moment Ryou can first hear Bakura's voice, he begins manipulating him - he knows Ryou wants to know about the Items, and is quite babbly with tidbits throughout - then he brings up the things he's done 'for' Ryou, because didn't he want to play games with his friends forever? He fixed it so he could - and while Ryou doesn't say 'omg, you sealed my friends into their pieces!' that's fairly obviously where his mind went. The last blow to Ryou's resistance is the subtle offer of revenge on the teacher who had been bothering Ryou earlier that day - he doesn't want to get a haircut, does he? But there are other, worse things that teacher did just by casually mentioning Ryou's problems, and probably the smartest bit of Bakura's manipulation is that he doesn't say it. Because saying it, backing Ryou into a corner, would make him fight.
I suspect the manipulation was going on even before then, only there was this lack of communication, so that Bakura was forced to take an action and judge by Ryou's reaction... and the only reaction we know of is that he kept all the pieces. All of them, his friends and these little villagers we get to see whom I suspect of being other random victims. He kept them. I can only assume that Bakura would take that as an 'all signs point to yes'.
And I can't get into detail without being spoilery - and I don't have Battle City yet, so I don't know how the deal between Malik and Bakura happens? But there are scenes I have seen in which we switch perspectives between another character and Bakura, and we get to see what Bakura is thinking. We see that he is trying to manipulate - he says things that are glaringly obvious lies, like he isn't even trying. (I suspect he's only trying when he passes himself off as Ryou) What he worries about is whether he has said the right thing, in order to get the reaction he's aiming for. It doesn't matter to him how they feel or what they think, it matters that they be helpful little peices and move in the direction he wants them to.
The thing is, though Seto is rather evil - or at least definitely a jerk - for the way he treats people, he ranks among the good guys because of the way he treats Mokuba. Yami no Yugi is worse, actually driving people insane or killing them, but he's a decent friend and accepted by Yugi, and so he counts as a good guy. Yugi's ...moral sense is questionable, hiding his knowledge of blackouts and concern that he might be responsible for the chaos around him because he doesn't want to lose his friends. But he's the best of them at friendship, and so of course he's good.
And Ryou? In trying to isolate himself, to contain the damage happening around him, has actually made the best decision in a moral sense - and yet, taking a step away from friendship puts him in a dangerous gray area as far as good and evil go in this world. While Bakura, whose original motivation of revenge for his people is a stock background for heroes, is the Villain because he manipulates people.
And this concludes this examination of the wtf?! that is Yu-Gi-Oh, as I have now made myself dizzy. @.@
shusu mentioned that Seto Kaiba is the foil to Yugi's hero. Which got me thinking about the way things seem to work in the manga, and how a character's status as good or evil depends on what kind of friend they are. (Rather than how they behave outside of their friendships, but that would be another rant)
The whole first run of the manga actually deals more with the foursome of Yugi, Anzu, Jounouchi and Honda actually becoming friends with each other than it is anything else - and Yami no Yugi only 'officially' enters the friendship circle after they think they've lost Honda. The bulk of the time, we only see 'friendship' defined within the circle of that foursome, as it slowly expands over the course of the story.
It's Yugi, being the main character, who sets the standards of friendship. With Jounouchi... I have to admit I have a little bit of trouble describing him. It’s so obvious on the surface, and then to stop and think in any depth - he is such a tangled mess. Granted, given his background of divorced parents and his being stuck with the alcoholic Dad (all Dads in YGO seem to be absentees or jerks) he wasn’t going to be Mr. Sunshine. Mostly it’s that, as Seto describes it once, he has ‘glass confidence’ - so he attempts to protect himself by being a loudmouthed, bullying, arrogant jerk. In the beginning, his problem is mostly that he’s jealous of Yugi - here’s this kind, relatively innocent guy with no apparent need to fight to maintain his ego the way he has to. He thinks to himself that Yugi 'talks like a girl'. Then Yugi pulls the rug out from under him, because he gets the living daylights beaten out of him, protecting himself and Honda. It just totally shocks him that someone so wussy would take that kind of punishment. As he spends more time with Yugi, he starts to relax, and his strength as a friend shows - mostly in that he is a lot like Yugi. Always up for a new game and ready to make a new friend (but that will come in later) It just slowly becomes clear that he is nearly as big a game-loving dork as Yugi - there is a willingness to be utterly silly that those two have, and the others don't. Anzu and Honda get their own versions of embarrasedness at times over Yugi and Jou, and their Dork Fits. ^_^ He just never had a friend he didn’t think would make fun of him for it.
But he did have a friend - Honda. Honda’s problem has more to do with sharing, at first. Jou is quite possibly the first friend he had, and someone he looks up to. He knew Jounouchi in lower grades the way Yugi knew Anzu, and noticed that even though Jou was in a rough gang (it’s Honda who informs us that Jou has a police record) he never beat up on the smaller and younger guys. Even in bullying Yugi, it’s more vicious harassment - they don’t actually try to hurt him. So first there is the problem that Yugi, in Honda’s opinion, is an interloper. Then there’s this - Honda’s biggest requirement for friendship is that you have each other’s backs. He missed Yugi getting the crap beat of him that first time, which leads to Jou trying to match-make them as friends. Playing intermediary and trying his hardest to convince each of them that the other is cool, you want to be friends, etc. It's only after they nearly all get expelled due to Jou's insane friendship-making scheme that Honda really accepts Yugi as a friend, and that was because he saw Yugi put himself on the line as they each tried to take the blame and keep the others from being expelled, and keep Honda from losing his chance with the girl he was trying to impress. This is the only time yet that I've seen Yami no Yugi come out without some form of game on the line - to drive off the teacher so they don't get expelled. It has, I think, more to do with Honda's sense of dignity, contrasted against Jou's focus on physically having one's back. The nice thing here is the way that compliments his best strength as a friend - he forgives people mouthing off and doing stupid things, mostly because he's aware he does it himself. That shows first in his telling Yugi and Anzu about Jou's gangsta past, and culminates in Death-T, when Jou is angsting about having been such a jerk because he didn't like himself, while Honda agrees. I suspect their friendship is rooted in that, because somebody had to be the first to forgive Jou being an ass.
Anzu actually has a bit of a temper, and has been seen decking Jounouchi - granted, he did deserve it for lifting her skirt. >:P But she’s proud in her own right, and there is a bit of hesitance to accept the new boys as friends - at first it’s more of a ‘if Yugi feels that way’ reaction. Part of the problem is that she knew them as bullies first, and didn’t understand why they acted that way, which is why Death-T is important - she needed to hear their reasons for being jerks as much as they needed to say it. Anzu is blindingly honest about her emotions and does not get self-deception so well. It is, fitting in with the underlying puzzle metaphor, the last piece she needed to ‘get’ them. But because Anzu is so honest, and tough enough to argue with them and throw punches if she has to, it makes them that much more comfortable around each other. At some point a bit before Death-T, she really stops being 'the girl' and is treated like one of the boys - otherwise I'm not sure they'd have felt comfortable enough to talk about things the way they did.
So their circle is complete. Even if it is a square. ;p
Seto. Appears to have no friends. None. Seto has minions. And Mokuba. And during Death-T, it’s one of the elements that seems to confirm Seto’s utter villainy that he isn’t even nice to Mokuba. Made that much worse by the fact that even then it’s obvious Seto is the center of Mokuba’s world - how could he not respond to such devotion?! Oh, something to do with essentially deciding he was going to take over the parent role after theirs had both died, and the other relatives betrayed them. If no one else will take care of them, he will. Never mind Gozaburo, who ensured that at some point Seto really went off the deep end. It changes the dynamics when Yugi-tachi learn, after fighting their way through Death-T, that Seto really was crazy. Not just exceptionally cruel and evil and enjoying said qualities, but genuinely unbalanced. Anzu is heartbroken, Yami no Yugi actually goes out of his way to assure Mokuba that it wasn’t permanent and Seto would wake up. He explains that he only used a Penalty Game to make Seto solve the puzzle of his heart, putting the pieces back together without anyone pressuring him and making him screw it up this time.
I don’t even know what to say to that, because frankly the way Yami no Yugi treats Seto makes me want to take a large blunt instrument to his spiky little head. He seems to object to Seto's sticking to his own path - everytime Seto does something that defies what Yami would have him do, we get that KAIBA! reaction, like a massive twitch. Often followed by lecturing, a Penalty Game, or the threat thereof. Rar.
Then we get to Duelist Kingdom, and we’ll never really know if it would have worked the way Yami no Yugi meant it to - because Seto didn’t wake up when he was done, he woke up when he sensed the Blue Eyes White Dragon being played by that creepy little ventriloquist. He then proceeds to come rescue Mokuba, and rejects Yugi’s wide eyed attempt at friendship - in favor of pursuing Pegasus' defeat single-handedly. The closest he gets to friendly behavior is when Yami no Yugi comes out to snarl at him for making Yugi cry - and Seto proceeds to talk shop with him about why it has to be Seto to defeat Pegasus. Otherwise, he continues in his behavior much as before, rejecting and mocking any attempt by the others to make friends.
It's after Pegasus is defeated, and all souls captured have been freed, that we see a real change in his behavior. Starting over? Mokuba is actually a better 'friend' than Seto, although he wouldn't admit to calling them friends either - Seto truly would’ve walked off that island without a backward glance, it's Mokuba who acts as an intermediary between the gang and his big brother.
Then we get to Ryou. By the time we meet Ryou, he is alone. We know very little about what friendships he had, and it comes down to this - he was a game master for a tabletop rpg, and Bakura sealed all his friends' souls into the pieces of their characters. We also know that he had an intensely loving relationship with his sister Amane, because he is seen writing a letter to her - and she is dead. That is actually comparable to Seto and Mokuba (he first meets Seto in D.K., and is reluctant to join in the badmouthing because someone who cares so for his brother can't be all bad) and Jounouchi and Shizuka. The one time I've seen him step in to 'fight' on behalf of the gang was when he almost told Seto about Jounouchi's sister and her eyes. >.> But as a friend? He is constantly just a bit on the outside... the gang held their hands out to him once, that I know of, and they were drawn into the rpg with Bakura - after which it always seems to be Ryou making the first move. When they show up depressed about Grandpa and he has to ask what's going on, when the decision is made that they all should go to D.K. It's Ryou who says he should go, and that's because he wants answers about the Items.
The problem here is that Ryou and the rest of the gang may be mutually failing each other as friends - Ryou needs to be trusted. The attitude makes sense - as the game master, he would have had to keep secrets from his own friends in the course of the game, and they would have had to trust him to be playing, rather than being a jerk.
In the end of Monster World game, when he has essentially committed suicide to let them finish Bakura's avatar, he turns around and thanks Yugi and the others for trusting him. But in other ways, he doesn't quite trust him. The suicide-via-forcing dice to explode was desperate, a last ditch tactic - and the game leading up to that feels more like Ryou shielding the others while he tries to take Bakura down from the inside. He fights for them, but on his own. And it's very much like that screen of being the game master never drops for him - he listens and watches, helps out when he feels he can - but he never really throws in with the others, never lays things on the line the way they do. Case in point, I think he puts the Ring back on because of that - he doesn't believe the gang will figure a way out of the Paradox Brothers' maze. He feels like he, and therefore Bakura, has to do something.
From the side of Yugi-tachi... they continually underestimate him. To see the way they reacted in Monster World, they rescued him - he just assisted somewhat. They constantly inform him of things - like Shadi, and any tidbits they've learned about the Items - only as these things come up, rather than telling him as soon as he makes it clear that he really wants to know. Which he stresses, before he's ever put the Ring back on. Yugi's reaction? Leaning over him, in this pose that somehow conveys this gently condescending big-brotherness, and warning him not to put the Ring back on! >.<
And quite frankly, Ryou is not stupid enough to miss the way they're treating him - the question is, will he forgive them for it or hold a grudge?
So we've got Yugi, with his core group of friends - and Yami no Yugi, who slowly becomes friends with Yugi's friends, treating Jounouchi almost like an equal, Honda rather like a soldier ( seriously, it's this nodding-acquaintance and exchanging of needs for orders) and Anzu like, um. OMG it's a girl she's scary! Although he does improve slowly, but... Someday I need to go into depth in the triangle that is Yugi-Yami no Yugi-Anzu. I really do. He has rescued her and then stared at her holding his arm like she is getting cooties on him. XD
And those two are Our Hero(s).
Then we have Seto, who is an island unto himself and Mokuba, and consistently rejects that any other way exists. Except that he slowly comes around to acknowledging that the gang's way both exists and works, except he's still not interested. *lalala, you can't get Friendship cooties on meeee! lalala* Mokuba is his friend, though - and business partner. What defines Seto as Foil and Bakura as Villain - Seto never does the one thing that Bakura does consistently - he never manipulates people. The thing in the anime where he lies to Mokuba in order to use him to get to Gozaburo, to get control of the company? Never happened.
That sort of thing is Bakura’s M.O.
From the moment Ryou can first hear Bakura's voice, he begins manipulating him - he knows Ryou wants to know about the Items, and is quite babbly with tidbits throughout - then he brings up the things he's done 'for' Ryou, because didn't he want to play games with his friends forever? He fixed it so he could - and while Ryou doesn't say 'omg, you sealed my friends into their pieces!' that's fairly obviously where his mind went. The last blow to Ryou's resistance is the subtle offer of revenge on the teacher who had been bothering Ryou earlier that day - he doesn't want to get a haircut, does he? But there are other, worse things that teacher did just by casually mentioning Ryou's problems, and probably the smartest bit of Bakura's manipulation is that he doesn't say it. Because saying it, backing Ryou into a corner, would make him fight.
I suspect the manipulation was going on even before then, only there was this lack of communication, so that Bakura was forced to take an action and judge by Ryou's reaction... and the only reaction we know of is that he kept all the pieces. All of them, his friends and these little villagers we get to see whom I suspect of being other random victims. He kept them. I can only assume that Bakura would take that as an 'all signs point to yes'.
And I can't get into detail without being spoilery - and I don't have Battle City yet, so I don't know how the deal between Malik and Bakura happens? But there are scenes I have seen in which we switch perspectives between another character and Bakura, and we get to see what Bakura is thinking. We see that he is trying to manipulate - he says things that are glaringly obvious lies, like he isn't even trying. (I suspect he's only trying when he passes himself off as Ryou) What he worries about is whether he has said the right thing, in order to get the reaction he's aiming for. It doesn't matter to him how they feel or what they think, it matters that they be helpful little peices and move in the direction he wants them to.
The thing is, though Seto is rather evil - or at least definitely a jerk - for the way he treats people, he ranks among the good guys because of the way he treats Mokuba. Yami no Yugi is worse, actually driving people insane or killing them, but he's a decent friend and accepted by Yugi, and so he counts as a good guy. Yugi's ...moral sense is questionable, hiding his knowledge of blackouts and concern that he might be responsible for the chaos around him because he doesn't want to lose his friends. But he's the best of them at friendship, and so of course he's good.
And Ryou? In trying to isolate himself, to contain the damage happening around him, has actually made the best decision in a moral sense - and yet, taking a step away from friendship puts him in a dangerous gray area as far as good and evil go in this world. While Bakura, whose original motivation of revenge for his people is a stock background for heroes, is the Villain because he manipulates people.
And this concludes this examination of the wtf?! that is Yu-Gi-Oh, as I have now made myself dizzy. @.@
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-14 01:55 pm (UTC)That is very interesting, and spot on, I think. I love the kind of thing that gives me new insights on characters - Ryou's 'game master' act is an interesting take on the way he behaves.
OMG it's a girl she's scary!
And THAT is so true. Yami no Yuugi tries to pretend that he's a hardcore, knowledgeable dead guy ... but he's kinda scared of the girl with a crush on him. It's hilarious.
...and now I'm going off to download some more manga. Mmmmm.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-14 11:43 pm (UTC)but he's kinda scared of the girl with a crush on him. It's hilarious.
Yes! And it's so much fun! >:D
..oh good lord now I have this image of Yugi teasing Yami no Yugi with an Anzu hand puppet. Which he would not do, and yet I can't get the image out of my head. XD
Oooooh, downloadable! :)~
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 07:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-14 02:31 pm (UTC)Couple random points to throw in (re: Kaiba, because, umm, yeah, obsessed.) There's an interesting definition of "evil" in YGO when it comes to Kaiba - at Death-T Kaiba is a villain, evil, proven by his rejection of Mokuba's loyalty and finally betrayal, subjecting his brother to the penalty game. Other than his restored loyalty to Mokuba afterwards, the biggest difference we see in Kaiba post-Death-T is a lack of deception. He's not only an honorable duelist; he doesn't lie at all (he does leave things out, such as *why* he's so hell-bent to defeat Pegasus even at the risk of his own life, but that's different). Which is a 180 from Kaiba's original introduction, in which he makes nice with Yugi first to steal the Blue Eyes, then to connive them into Death-T (with that creepy, creepy friendly smile, and the announcement that this is his dream, to make amusement parks for children - and it's only much later that you find out he was in fact being totally honest about that.) As you pointed out re: Bakura, manipulation = evil, in the YGO 'verse; Kaiba flips from evil to good (if rival/foil) when he becomes honest, various sociopathic tendencies nonwithstanding.
Am really wanting to see Battle City play out in the manga, because in the anime there's the thread through it of Kaiba trying to figure out what this friendship thing really is all about, (Yami's 'friends, opponents, does there have to be a difference?') and possibly coming to terms with some of it in the end, and I suspect that's a stronger theme in the manga.
(There's another aspect to Kaiba's attitude that isn't really explored in the manga so is likely unintentional, but while Yugi-tachi are all high schoolers, Kaiba doesn't appear to attend school after that first chapter - as a CEO, he lives in the adult, cutthroat business world, where trust and friendship aren't nearly as pure, more negotiation than feelings. He quite literally can't afford to be too trusting or open at work, and since he's been raised to live his job, he doesn't really have a personal life. Even Mokuba, who seems to be the one person Kaiba does trust without reservation, is as much business partner as brother.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 12:26 am (UTC)And you know, I hadn't thought of a lot of this? I've been so focused on figuring out what the heck was going on with Bakura and Ryou that I wasn't thinking about Seto! :( *bad Kaiba-fan*
And you know, you're right - especially about the lying during Death-T, which was just utterly creepy. I never did see how Yugi and Jou could buy that smile, it's so... vacant, almost.
Battle City is going to totally rock. ^__^
Hrrrm. I think a lot of these things are unintentional - like the author seems to think they only need mentioning once, and then we're just supposed to keep it mind the rest of the way? Like Honda's constant absentee-ism from group events being because he has family - and given his nephew, I don't think we want to see the rest of that family. >> Jou working to put himself through school, and Anzu's dancing, and the fact that Seto
ishas a job - it gets touched on once and never again, really.But even though he's living his job, there's still that desire to make other kids happy - just as long as he doesn't have to be in the room with said kids? Especially if they're Yugi-tachi. ;p
Argh, my brain is full of evil crack right now - just wondered what the conversation between Seto and Honda's little freak of a nephew was like.
...or for that matter, what sort of conversations happened during the helicopter ride home from D.K. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 12:54 am (UTC)way way too mucha bit - you gave me an excuse to put some thoughts into words ^_^I have Battle City in Japanese, I just need the motivation to get out ye olde J-E dictionary and plow through ^__^;
I really wonder with YGO, how many of the details Takahashi put in were just throwaway background stuff, and how much he actually thought things through. Because most of the chars, the more you poke at them, the more complicated they become, and that can't all be coincidence...can it? I'm not sure, because the plots themselves do have this sort of thrown-together oh-what-would-be-cool-this-week feel (and I am convinced he didn't know Kaiba was a CEO when he was first introduced) but a lot of the char details, I wonder if they really were that developed in his mind, he just didn't see the need to elaborate any more than he did in the manga itself. Mangaka being fanboys and -girls for the most part, they seem to expect a degree of obsessive fan interpretation, so...
I love Kaiba because he's a walking contradiction. That everything he does is ultimately for the sake of giving children the childhood he didn't have himself...and building amusement parks = worst supervillain motive ever! Conversely, I find it ironically amusing that for all Yugi-tachi, Jounouchi especially, don't get along with Kaiba, they're always tickled pink to play with his new toys. They think the duel disks are the coolest things, even if they were invented by their detested arch-rival...
Oooh, Kaiba and Johji in Death-T. That's terribly tempting...
And, er, obnoxious as it is to pimp one's own fic, I have to mention that I just wrote the return from DK (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2609548/1/) (not Yugi-tachi, but the Kaiba homecoming...)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 01:34 am (UTC)That fic, though? Is beautiful.
And I will come back to this, sometime later, because I'm fairly convinced Takakashi didn't have more than a vauge clue when he started this, it's soo - eep. One of these days I'm going to end up doing an essay on how you can track the way the plot is coming together in his end through the story.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 04:10 pm (UTC)And yes, it's rather amusing how haphazard the story is. Just heard that in a SJ interview Takahashi admitted that the cardgame was originally meant to be only those 2 chapters, but it was liked so much that he brought it (and apparently Kaiba as well) back. Which explains the great discrepancies between Kaiba's first and second appearance.
(and then I could go back to commenting about the original essay, because reading the latest volume it occurred to me that one of Jounouchi's big traits is how much he loves being a friend. Not just having friends, hanging out with people, but the very concept of friendship, how proud he is to be Yuugi's friend - he's called himself Yuugi's "shinyuu" in Japanese, which pretty much means best friend, though usually it's used with close friends from childhood. I've gotten the feeling one of the reasons he hates Kaiba so much is because Kaiba rejects the gift of Yuugi's friendship the same way Jou did at first, and that reminder stings. ...or maybe I shouldn't be analyzing silly kids' comics too much ^^)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-18 12:01 am (UTC)...or maybe I shouldn't be analyzing silly kids' comics too much
Are you kidding? One of the first essays I tried to type out, instead of ranting in my head, mentions that! XD How Jou similar Jou and Seto are in some ways - and how Jou is all ticked at him "How dare he not be Yugi's friend, stupid Kaiba! Rar!"
^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-14 07:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-14 11:49 pm (UTC)...moral compass. XD *pictures Ryou trying to use his, while Bakura snarks that it's broken and gets it chucked at him in response*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 02:02 am (UTC)(read whole thing and responses and woo!)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 09:34 am (UTC)More like. Ryou trying to use his while Bakura is walking around him in circles constantly throwing the compass off as it tries to avoid him.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-15 11:55 am (UTC)And still manipulative! >:)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-16 07:13 am (UTC)