(no subject)
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. @.@
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(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)