Yu-Gi-Oh! Reality's Curtain
is a Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V fanfiction written by Master of Anime224. The story follows the seemingly normal Matsuda Yukaro as he's dragged into a mass of endless confusion by the appearance of a cloaked woman going by the name of Lady Light, transfer student Kimiko Kimura and a whole host of baddies.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Reality's Curtain provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: subverted and played with. Adults tend not to appear except on the villain's side, what with the story focusing almost entirely on the small core cast, but that core cast are all older teenagers.
- Anti-Hero: Kimiko and Lady Light. Kenta could also count, but his moral slant is more ambiguous at the moment.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Kaneko's not so shy when you threaten her brother.
- Big Damn Heroes: Matsuda in chapter 8.
Matsuda: you won't have to.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: the shade the main conflict appears to be taking. Kimiko and Lady Light are definitely darker gray, with Yamato and Miranda being seemingly black and Enzo just a darker gray Blood Knight. However, since the villains' intentions aren't really all that clear at the moment, this could change.
- Butt-Monkey: Daitaro gets a significant amount of abuse.
- Calling Your Attacks: it's a Yu-Gi-Oh! story.
- Cassandra Truth: played with and ultimately subverted. Matsuda considers telling his mother about the Hard Light that led to his concussion, but concludes that this would be the outcome. Then he decides it was All Just a Dream.
- The Conspiracy: there appears to be one on the villains' side, but due to the nature of the story we know precisely nothing about it yet.
- Cutting the Knot: in chapter 8, Miranda threatens to shoot Kimiko into giving up the location of the Key. She then later decides to just shoot Kenta, who forces her to subvert it and duel them.
- Lady Light in the first chapter just beats a guy up for information.
- subverted with Yamato in chapter 2. He could just shoot Matsuda and rifle through his deck, but decides to duel him instead.
- Bloodier And Gorier: than the source material, at least as far as graphic violence is concerned. Though Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V IS incredibly dark, it is still shounen. This story, however, makes the content seem much more adult. See Lady Light blowing a guy's brains out in chapter 3.
- Deadpan Snarker: literally everyone, though points have to go to Kenta for the "Shadow Bitch" line.
- Matsuda makes it look easy, mainly using it to pick on Daitaro.
- Defeat Means Friendship: averted. The story's so dark that no-one even TRIES to play Warrior Therapist and most duels are simply for the purpose of beating an opponent into submission. The one time this could apply, in chapter 5, the two duelists were already on friendly terms.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Zig-Zagged. Kimiko appears to start defrosting for Matsuda, only to give him a very cold shoulder. She begins opening up again after chapter 8, however.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Miranda goes up against Kenta and Kimiko in chapter 8 in a battle royal that pits her against two opponents. Due to the nature of her deck, she'd have won had Matsuda not gotten involved.
- Duels Decide Everything: almost subverted in chapter 8, but played straight the rest of the time.
- Evil Plan: there is one, involving the key and starting a huge war. Not much else is known due to the nature of the plot.
- Foreshadowing: Yamato calling himself Kimiko's friend early on foreshadows that he betrayed her and Lady Light.
- Guns Are Useless: subverted and played straight. Lady Light and Yamato are both shown quite effectively killing people, but when Miranda tries it Kenta just knocks the gun out of her hand.
- Hard Light: appears from chapter 1, to Matsuda's great confusion.
- Hot-Blooded: Daitaro
- In the Hood: Lady Light.
- Jerkass: there are a few, but Yamato takes the cake
and eats it too. - Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: okay, so first we have Lady Light showing up, and the mystery surrounding who she is and why there is hard light. Then enter Kimiko, more questions are raised surrounding her, namely where she came from, what relation she has to Lady Light and why she's so unsociable, after which Yamato enters the fray making us wonder why Kimiko and Lady Light both seem to hate him so much, and the rest of his villainous organisation join in searching for some "key" which no-one seems to know the location of. Several flashbacks and interactions raise even more questions about Kimiko and Yamato's past, and we're only on the eighth chapter.
- Kudzu Plot: We learned that the items the villains were after are called the Key to Reality and the Chaos Altar, and that Kimiko had been opposing them for a while, but that still just raised more questions as to what they actually do, who the villains actually are and what their plans and motivations are. Chapter 9 also reveals the name of Kenta's employer, but also raises the questions as to who he is and what the hell the "Keeper" is. At the conclusion of the first arc we learned Kimiko's reason for being so unsociable, but that just made us question what happened to make her feel that way.
- Lampshade Hanging: there's plenty. One example being:
Matsuda: who has hair like us?
Daitaro: dude, we're in Japan. Everyone and their dog has hair like us.
- Large Ham: Daitaro practically embodies this trope.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Lady Light's remark that some card designers watch too much anime is quite clearly the author taking a jab at himself.
- MacGuffin: The Key, whatever it is.
- The Magic Poker Equation: part and parcel of being a Yu-Gi-Oh! story. Special mention goes to Matsuda in the duel against Miranda, when he manages to open exactly the right cards to use in his situation.
- Magic Versus Science: discussed lightly by Matsuda in-universe. He concludes that supernatural powers using dueling are ridiculous and leaves it at that.
- Myth Arc: driven by one from the first chapter. If if the main events of a chapter don't seem relevant, there is something in there to drive the arc along.
- Red Herring: When Kenta is introduced, he is pretty heavily implied to be working with the villains right after Miranda has been revealed to have an unspecified agent watching Matsuda. The very next chapter shows him to be decidedly against them, even saving Kimiko from Miranda.
- Sadist: Kimiko shows shades in chapter 9 when she curb-stomps Brock and looks positively delighted as she does so. In the same chapter she had also made several threats with regards to making he and Hiro "suffer" that reek of sadism.
- Said Bookism: averted with EXTREME prejudice. Most lines of dialogue are attributed either with said or some action by the speaker, and they are only used sparingly in a way that actually serves to accentuate the speech.
- Serious Business: it's a Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic, what did you expect?
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Matsuda's stock reaction to Daitaro and Kaneko's (frequent) claims that he and Kimiko are going out.
- Ship Tease: a couple between Matsuda and Kaneko in chapters 2 and 6.
- Shout-Out: the story is rife with them.
- there's one to Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V itself in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in chapter 4.
- Chapter 5 has a nice number of wrestling references:
- The Bad Influence, aka Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian
- Kenta Kobashi
- Kenta Kobashi's Burning Hammer
- Kenta's name is a shout-out in and of itself: Kenta is taken from Kenta Kobayashi, with Miyano taken from seiyuu Mamoru Miyano.
- The Cosmic HEROes are a string of shout-out after shout-out.
- While Andromeda itself is not a shout-out, the effect and attack names, Neutron Star Collision and Black Hole Sun are obvious references to the Muse and Soundgarden songs of the same names.
- Motivator is Kamina, with Giga-Mech being Gurren.
- Galactic Guardian is Peter Quill/Star-Lord from Guardians Of The Galaxy.
- Data Dog is Ein from Cowboy Bebop
- Alien is possibly Garrus from the Mass Effect games
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: heavily cynical, though it does seem to sway towards idealism a couple of times, especially with Matsuda's attitude towards Kimiko despite her Jerkass tendencies.
- Smug Snake: Yamato is either this or a Magnificent Bastard, no-one's quite sure yet.
- Sociopathic Hero: Kimiko decides to Pay Evil unto Evil at Brock's Villainous Breakdown, curb stomping him, utterly humiliating him and taking pleasure in it, all while having declared her desire to protect reality and Matsuda and fighting on the side of the heroes.
- Theme Naming: follows the trend of all source which came before by putting the "Yu" syllable in the protagonist's name.
Word of God confirms that it IS the elongated "Yuu" syllable, but in a subversion is actually spelled with the kanji for "courage" rather than "friendship".- The Cosmic HERO synchro monsters are all named after constellations.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Matsuda, Daitaro and Kaneko.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 8 literally throws Kimiko to the wolves and reveals the legitimate threat of another villain who drives two heroes into a wall before Matsuda shows up and Kimiko finally decides to stop being a Jerkass.
- Wham Line: "I REFUSE TO BURY ANYBODY ELSE!"
- The Worf Effect: Happens to Kimiko and Kenta in chapter 8 as Miranda corners them despite the 2-on-1 situation and it having been shown that the two of them are very capable duelists. Justified as Miranda uses Shaddolls, which naturally shut down the kind of plays those two would be likely to make.
- World of Snark: most character interactions contain sarcasm, to the point that the vast majority of the story's humour is just Matsuda and Daitaro being dicks to each other.
- Would Hurt a Child: though Kenta's actual age is up in the air, Miranda seems to think he's a child and has no problem shooting him, or Kimiko for that matter.
