This is the first time I've taken a 2 week gap from uploading anything on the site. It's somehing I didn't wanna write any time soon, but here we are.
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| © Kazuki Takahashi, TV Tokyo, Studio Gallop |
I've never procrastinated so much on a blog post since I started the website, cuz I honestly didn't know how to write this. Yeah, I have a few draft posts which are near completion, but it didn't feel right to publish something that doesn't address the news. By now, I'm sure you're aware of Kazuki Takahashi's passing at the age of 60. Needless to say, I'm saddened by this, but I'm not gonna act all sentimental and pretend like I knew him, cuz I didn't. However, I owe that man a lot. The story, characters and game he created are an integral part of my life. I mean, before I moved here and started blogging about all kinds of stuff, I was blogging exclusively about Yugioh on Duel Amino for 5 whole years. There is so much to explore within that franchise, I still have a plethora of ideas that go into uncharted territory.
There's not gonna be any structure to this post. I wanna keep things as free flowing as possible and just write a little. Like I said, I didn't want to upload anything non-Yugioh related on here, but I chose to honour Takahashi-san by starting #KazukiTakahashiWeek on TikTok and YouTube where I uploaded nothing but Yugioh content for 7 days. It wasn't much, but it was the only thing I could think of to implement immediately, as a way to honour him and his creative work.
So... what does Yugioh mean to me? Well, a lot to say the least. It was the first anime I watched on TV before I even knew what anime was. Me and my friends would meet up behind my block every summer afternoon and duel for hours on end. Classic style. On the concrete, hunched over, no sleeves, no mats, ants crawling on the cards. That was still the best time of my life in terms of enjoying dueling. All my friends were infected with Yugioh fever every summer. It felt like we were living in Phineas and Ferb but instead of building new whacky stuff every day, our summer vacation was an all-out dueling battle royale. Oh yeah, also our cards were fake cuz you just couldn't find original ones in my hometown until the early 2010s. I made a post about my fake cards a few years ago here for some context.
That wasn't all though. The anime is what lit up that flame. Not only was Duel Monsters on TV, it even came out on dvd. 5 episodes per disk packaged with a magazine. Needless to say, I've collected it all.
The light brown dvds in the top row are the complete Bulgarian dub of Yugioh Duel Monsters. The blue ones below them are GX, the red ones are 5Ds and you can see a glimpse of all the fake cards at the bottom left going all the way in. Man, I still remember getting the last Duel Monsters dvd and hearing that there's a new series set after it. Little did I know I'd discover my favourite anime of all time. When I first saw GX with Jaden and Syrus on the dvd cover I though Syrus was actually the protagonist. He looked kinda like little Yugi and had cool coloured hair so I was lowkey surprised Jaden was actually the main character. Apart from those dvds I also go the latest English releases, which form this awesome image of Exodia and Atem on the inside.
I also got all the manga currently printed in English. Had to remove layers of other manga to get to it and take those pics lol.
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| Two Japanese volumes I randomly found in a British trift shop lol |
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| Had to end the manga section with the greatest art book of all time |
Here are also some of my character decks. These have honestly been my primary enjoyment of the franchise for the past few years. I'm a huge stickler and a total elitist when it comes to character decks. I love building them to be completely anime accurate. My process starts by noting all cards used by a character as well as those shown to be in their deck/hand (but sometimes not played) to confirm to total pool of cards I get to work with. Then I shave off the terrible cards and streamline the build to create the most optimized, busted and broken 40 card combination. I do this in an attempt to showcase the character's peak dueling ability. I then do a whole lotta tests, while keeping a bunch of potentially useful cards in the side deck. After a lot of trial and error, I replace the cards I draw into but never use for some of the side deck cards until I finally reach the fully optimized final version. It's so much fun having these busted decks clash with each other to determine who the best duelist really is.
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| These are the decks I don't use too often and haven't optimized |
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| These are the decks I'm currently gathering cards for and optimizing. Can't wait to have them completed |
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| These are my fully completed and optimized character decks. The crown jewels of my collection |
For those characters who unfortunately don't have over 40 cards shown in the anime or who have a lot of anime exclusive cards which aren't printed yet, I use other sources as the basis for creation. Usually video games, primarily the Tag force series as that's one I found to be anime inspired and is a series of games I really respect. In the end, the decks do tend to be pretty expensive especially if you wanna pimp them out and use exclusive rarities not found in English, buuuuut I honestly think it's worth it for me. The amount of entertainment value they provide me is insanely high.
Overall... how much do I love Yugioh? Well to put it into perspective. Picture this. If someone told me they're gonna delete Yugioh or every other franchise out there and gave me a choice to decide which one gets deleted... I would really have to think for a while. We're talking Yugioh vs literally everything else. Even with all the negatives. Even with the anime sucking for more than a decade. Even with the game not being fun for more than a decade. Even with the manga series being neglected. Even with the switch of target demographic that alienates old fans. Even with all that... for me... Yugioh's greatness when concentrated is comparable to the combined greatness of all other franchises put together. Quite honestly, I don't know what my answer would have been, but the fact that in this hypothetical scenario, I'm genuinely contemplating whether or not choose Yugioh over everything else serves as a testament to its masterpiece status.
R.I.P Kazuki Takahashi. You were and still are a personal creative inspiration of mine. Everything you've given us stays right here I'm our hearts! You'll never be forgotten!
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| Source: sinceersz Via DeviantArt |
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