Characters / Yu-Gi-Oh!: Main Characters

Yu-Gi-Oh! Main Character Index
Main Characters (Yami Yugi | Yami Bakura | Seto Kaiba) | Domino High School | Domino City Residents | Kaiba Corp | Industrial Illusions | Ghouls and Rare Hunters | Other Duelists | Ancient Egypt | Other Characters | Gaming Pieces | Cards

The main cast of the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh.

ALL spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware of major spoilers.

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Character-Specific Pages

• Yami Yugi
• Yami Bakura
• Seto Kaiba

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Tropes applying to the Friends in General

• Bully Turned Buddy: About half of the group (Jounouchi, Honda and Otogi) started out as bullies but eventually reformed themselves after learning the values of friendship and redemption.
• Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: Each of them are on different levels of the popularity scale. You have Otogi and Ryou on the cool side (thanks to their fangirls), Anzu and Yugi in the middle area, and Honda and Jounouch on the loser side.
• Fire-Forged Friends: They've each faced various forms of hardships and foes which have strengthened their bonds as friends over time.
• In-Series Nickname: In the 4Kids Dub, Kaiba refers to them as the "Geek Squad".
• The Power of Friendship: Each of them (Not just Anzu/Tea) are firm believers in the power of friendship and use it to help each other in times of crisis.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: While they do love and care for each other, they will not hesitate to make sarcastic takes at each other. Though Jounouchi tends to be the main target for their remarks.

Yugi Muto

Yugi Muto (武藤 遊戯; Mutou Yuugi)

Voiced by: Megumi Ogata (Toei Anime), Shunsuke Kazama (Duel Monsters), Dan Green (English), Irwin Daayán (Latin American Spanish), Alex Saudinós (European Spanish)

"I made a wish on the puzzle ... 'I wish for friends' ... Friends I can count on...! Friends who could count on me... No matter what...!! Friends who could count on me...!"

^{Click here to see his appearance in Dark Side of Dimensions}

The main character of the series, Yugi is obsessed with games of all sorts. Having grown up playing games by himself, Yugi receives the pieces of the ancient Egyptian artifact called the Millennium Puzzle, from his grandfather, Solomon. Yugi spends eight years trying to solve it. Soft-spoken, timid, meek, and shy, he doesn't have any real friends, except for Anzu, whom he's known since elementary school. Two kids in particular, Jonouchi and Honda, are regularly rough on him, but they befriend Yugi after he stands up to an even bigger bully for them. Afterwards, he completes the ancient Millennium Puzzle and became the Guardian of the Shadow Games, releasing his "other self" - the spirit of an ancient, gambling Pharaoh - entering into a giant mess involving life-threatening games, thousand-year-old spirits, cursed artifacts, and lots of ancient Egyptian magic. Since it gives him friends and character development, Yugi takes it all in stride.

He's knowledgeable about all games. In Duel Monsters, he mostly uses the same deck as his alter-ego. Towards the end of the series, he makes an original deck that focuses on monsters that are individually weak but have powerful synergistic effects. This deck's trump cards are Valkyrion the Magna Warrior, Stronghold the Moving Fortress, Gandora The Dragon of Destruction, Silent Swordsman LV0 and Silent Magician LV0. In the anime, his favorite cards are Dark Magician and Maha Vailo. His Dark Side of Dimensions deck has a split focus between the Dark Magician, Gaia and Gadget monsters and the new Magician Girl archetype that focuses on attack point modulation, retaining Gandora as his final ace monster that he uses as a game closer.

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• The Ace: He has a natural talent for all types of games, and grew to become particularly good in Duel Monsters. Upon defeating Yami Yugi in the Ceremonial Duel at the end of the Duel Monsters anime and the manga, he cements his status as an ace duelist. In the anime continuity, by the time of GX's final season, he's still the reigning champion of the world and a spiritual version of him gives Judai the fight of his life in a "Graduation Duel" designed to reteach Judai his love for the game.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Milder than Yami Yugi as he is a Nice Guy in all media, but he is more innocent in the anime compared to his manga counterpart being a Covert Pervert. The manga also has him get visibly annoyed more often than in the anime. Likewise, due to the anime removing the general game focus in favor of just ''Duel Monsters'', traits such as Yugi's overall game obsession are toned down.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Toei anime had him lose games more often compared to the manga, he doesn't use much strategy and has little knowledge of tactics, and he's only able to beat Miho in Duel Monsters.
• All Take and No Give: Initially in his relationship with Yami Yugi. Once aware of him in the early manga he calls on him to sort out bullies, but later refuses to entertain the idea that Yami Yugi might have his own identity or could be free. He grows out of this eventually. He also feels this in regards to his other friends, believing himself a burden.
• Anime Hair: His spiky, tri-colored hair is among the most famous examples of the style yet nobody acts like it's notable In-Universe.
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: In the first few volumes of the manga, he has no memory of what happens when Yami Yugi is in control. Over time, he gradually starts to realize that he's missing chunks of time, but hides this from his friends because he's afraid of what they'll think. This comes to a head during Death-T, when Honda's Heroic Sacrifice sends him into a Heroic BSoD. After Jonouchi and Anzu reassure him, he resolves to not be afraid of his other self anymore, and when the arc concludes, he realizes that this is the first time he's been able to remember everything that happened with Yami Yugi.
• Ascended Fanboy: In The Dark Side of Dimensions, Yugi wants to become a game designer after graduating high school, having obsessed over games of all sorts throughout the series. In a possible ending showcased on Kazuki Takahashi's Instagram, Yugi ends up inventing a world-scale strategy board game called Spherium II, which receives enough acclaim to get a joint development deal from a Back from the Dead Kaiba. He continues to be the King of Games, down to creating them.
• Audience Surrogate: Intended as one for the audience. Kazuki Takahashi based the idea of Yami Yugi on a dream he thinks is common for children — when the situation is dire, Yugi becomes a stronger and more mature version of himself with magical powers and unparalleled luck and skill in games.
• Awesome by Analysis: He has near-encyclopaedic knowledge of Duel Monster cards and games in general, allowing him to fill in gaps in Yami's expertise due to how the once-ceremonial competition has changed due to Pegasus' expansions to it. While he might not have access to the most powerful cards in the game like Kaiba or Dartz, he'll often know of ways to counter them.
• Back for the Finale: Many of the cards he used in the last duel of the series were older Duel Monsters cards Yami Yugi no longer used, such as Summoned Skull and Swords of Revealing Light.
• Badass Normal: He manages to beat Ryuji Otogi in a game of Dragons, Dice & Dungeons in the manga, Yami Bakura in a Shadow Game of Duel Monsters in the Memory World RPG, and Yami Yugi, without using the power of the Millennium Puzzle or the God Cards. In the anime, he manages to defeat Marik, who was controlling Bandit Keith, without using the power of the Millennium Puzzle. He was also in a position to defeat Rebecca before surrendering.
• Batfamily Crossover: In Bonds Beyond Time movie, Yugi and Yami teams up with Jaden Yuki and Yusei Fudo from different eras to defeat Paradox.
• Batman Gambit:
  • His final trick to beat Atem in the Ceremonial Duel relies on him having banished his copy of Monster Reborn with the Gold Sarcophagus, banking on Atem eventually needing to resolve Monster Reborn to stay in the match. When Atem goes for it to revive Osiris, Yugi reveals the Sarcophagus's banished card, negating Monster Reborn and leaving Atem without a chance to summon a new monster, giving Yugi a chance to win the duel.
  • He also does this again to Kaiba in Dark Side of Dimensions, giving Kaiba Monster Reborn so he can use Magical Contract Door to search out Gandora X. Knowing Kaiba will try to use it, Yugi had set the trap "Final Geas" which banished every monster in the Graveyard to let him summon Dark Magician and attack for game.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Not him specifically, but underneath this dorky kid is a powerful spirit who can harm you if you cross him. He plays this straighter in the Orichalcos Arc where he is furious at Yami for his betrayal, albeit in a Cruel to Be Kind manner.
• Book Dumb: At least in the manga. As smart as he is at games, he's a very, very bad student. He has very low test scores, along with Jonouchi and Honda, and in the very same chapter this bit of info is provided to us, he's shown to be more interested in creating a bingo game out of the test score chart than he is in the actual test scores. Subverted in Dark Side of Dimensions, where he's school valedictorian. One can argue after the manga ended, he chose to focus on his schooling more but had time for games. This may overlap with Brilliant, but Lazy.
• Bully Magnet: His tiny stature and timed personality made him a magnet for bullies early in the story.
• Character Development:
  • In the first chapter, Yugi started out as a timid and weak kid whose only friend was Anzu and who was constantly bullied by Jonouchi and Honda. However, he did not take kindly to Tetsu beating them up and openly calls them his friends. It was the starting point for him as a character, coming before he completed the Millennium Puzzle. Later on, he's able to gain new friends and confidence, forbidding Yami Yugi from killing anyone, and then defeats him in his final duel.
  • Another factor is that Yugi is rather childish in the early volumes of the manga, even after learning of Yami Yugi's existence. Later in the manga, he outgrows this, and if Dark Side of Dimensions is anything to go by, he matures enough to give a graduation speech.
• The Chessmaster: While Yami Yugi and Kaiba have powerful cards and ridiculous drawing luck on their side, Yugi really only has his wits to rely on in a duel. Which makes it all the more impressive that he becomes the best duelist in the series towards the end, surpassing even Yami Yugi. All of his victories are purely the result of his ingenious tactics and predicting his opponents, without ever really relying on lucky draws.
• Chick Magnet: While Anzu is his primary Love Interest, in the anime Rebecca declares him her boyfriend, and Vivian Wong thinks he's adorable. The three of them fight over him on a couple of occasions, to Yugi's embarrassment.
• Childhood Friends: With Anzu, whom he's known since elementary school.
• Childhood Friend Romance: He has a crush on Anzu, and she seems to return the feelings, though the manga and anime leave their romance ambiguous. In an issue of Shonen Jump, Kazuki Takahashi said Anzu's feelings might have become stronger over time once she left for America, which The Dark Side of Dimensions seems to confirm.
• The Chosen One: The chosen solver and wielder of the Millennium Puzzle.
• Covert Pervert: Brief moment in chapter 1. In chapter 2 of the manga, Yugi seems all too interested in the videotape with mosaic censoring that Jonouchi has watched. At the start of Millennium World, you find out that he and Jonouchi are still swapping porn tapes. When Mai first appears in the manga version of Duelist Kingdom, Yugi initially ogles her just as much as Jonouchi and Honda do. Season 0 also has a moment where Miho offers Yugi a kiss if he throws his duel with her, which he is all too eager to accept.
• Cutesy Dwarf: He's really short. Later chapters and episodes have him gradually grow taller, and by the end of season 5 and The Dark Side of Dimensions, he's at Atem's height. He's still not taller than Anzu, but his head is more or less level with hers, aside from their hair.
• The Cutie: His big eyes, fascination with games, and caring nature make him quite endearing.
• Defeating the Undefeatable:
  • In the manga, he's the only character to beat Atem fairly in any game or duel (in the anime Rafael beats him fairly as well).
  • Yugi is also notable for being the only character in the original series who manages to defeat the God Cards in a straight-up brawl, without using a God Card of his own. While there are other cases where the God Cards are neutralized enough to be forced away from winning the duel on their own, such as in Ishizu vs Kaiba's case, Yugi manages to outright match the power of Obelisk with his Silent Swordsman, Turn Jump, and Crumbling Axe combo.
• Determinator: He spent eight years working on solving the Millennium Puzzle.
• Deuteragonist: He plays this role in The Dark Side of Dimensions to Kaiba's Villain Protagonist.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Defeats the Egyptian God Cards with a deck mostly comprised of Toy-themed monsters, becoming the first and only character in the original series to defeat a God Card monster in a head-to-head brawl.
• Disappeared Dad: He lives with his grandpa and his mother. His father is never seen or mentioned in the series, but according to Kazuki Takahashi, he's away on business.
• The Dreaded: Gandora the Dragon of Destruction played this role amongst all the monster cards in Yugi's deck at the end of the series, thanks to its ability to remove from play every other card on the field. The first time it's summoned against Dark Bakura, Dark Bakura is all but terrified by its appearance, and for a good reason. For the rest of the series, Gandora's summoning is basically used as a sign that Yugi is going for a game-winning play, regardless of how successful it is at resolving its effect, best illustrated during the Ceremonial Duel when Yugi expected Atem to use Mirror Force as a counterplay to Gandora, only to reveal it's to force Atem to use Monster Reborn as a last resort. When Yugi summons a retain of Gandora in Dark Side of Dimensions, him declaring its effect is enough to make even Kaiba panic.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Up until the Memory World arc, Yami Yugi/Atem did all the dueling and strategizing, but since they were Sharing a Body, Yugi got all the credit. Yami Bakura exploits this during their duel in the Pharaoh's tomb in the anime to try to convince Yugi to surrender, and Kaiba constantly brings this up in the dub version of the Ceremonial Battle. Averted in the dub, where they share a mind when dueling and plan together most of the time.
• Fatal Flaw: Endurance. Namely, his lack of it. He becomes a better duelist than the Pharaoh at the end of the series, to the point where he was legitimately about to beat Kaiba by himself before Aigami intervened in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions. However, that doesn't change the fact that he's still physically a really scrawny teenager. Whenever a duel features Synchronization between the player and their monsters or requires the players own stamina to summon them, Yugi ends up passing out halfway through the duel. He ended up passing out during the Shadow Game with Pegasus due to the strain, and similarly ended up passing out when facing the Millennium Ring possessed Aigami in a Shadow Game, requiring Atem to step in for the final blow.
• Finishing Move: Gandora is usually the card that Yugi builds his game-ending plays on, and as a result, once Yugi summons it, it's a sign that the duel is entering its closing stage, regardless of the result of its effect.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: A tiny, forgiving, socially-awkward hero... who wears a collar and leather to bed. No one really mentions the incongruity. In fact, Yami Yugi mentions in the manga that they’re specifically Yugi’s choice of clothing, and not his–he himself thinks Yugi has poor fashion sense, and once tried to get him to put some chains on his arms after putting one on the Puzzle.
• Fun Size: Though he gets noticeably taller as the manga progresses.
• Geek Physiques: He's an avid, geeky gamer with a tiny stature and a scrawny physique.
• Genre Savvy: When it comes to games. During the Millennium World arc, he goes to the tavern to get more information from the non-player characters because it's an RPG trope, even before he was fully aware that they were actually in an RPG.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Yugi when it comes to games in general. He has every kind of game imaginable in his room. He even goes as far as to visit a rival gaming shop just so he can get his hands on the newest game they were marketing, Dungeon Dice Monsters.
• Helpless Good Side: He rarely duels on his own and tends to lose games without the Pharaoh's help, with a major one in the manga being his first match against Imori in Dragon Cards, which was a Curb-Stomp Battle in Imori's favor. Later on, however, he takes matters into his own hands during his duel with the brainwashed Jonouchi at Battle City and Yami Bakura in the Memory World.
• The Hero: In contrast to Yami Yugi's Anti-Hero, Yugi is a straightforward good guy throughout the entire series.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After a particularly cruel duel with Kaiba, which also helps him to truly realize the lengths Yami Yugi is willing to go to to win. This is later given a Call-Back in the manga, where Jonouchi unintentionally stumbles into that particular memory while trying to find the door to the past.
  • In the manga, he also receives one after Honda's Heroic Sacrifice during Death-T. The anime version of the Kaiba duel mentioned above mixed a bit of this in, as these respective moments marked where Yugi came to more fully realize the existence of his other self.
  • As the Millennium World arc begins, Yugi is seen crying over being separated from Yami Yugi after the latter used the God Cards to open the portal to the past. Anzu takes it as hard as he does.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Attempts this at the end of his duel with the brainwash Jounouchi, allowing himself to get hit by Meteor of Destruction so Jounouchi could save himself. Jounouchi refused to take this lying down, and made one of his own in response (He's saved by Kaiba in the manga, and Shizuka in the anime).
  • In the DOMA filler arc, Yugi sacrifices himself when the Seal of Orichalcos tries to take Yami Yugi's soul, allowing it to take him instead.
• Identical Stranger: Yugi greatly resembles Yami; but whether he is a descendant of Yami or a reincarnation of his who can somehow exist in tandem with his past self is never quite explained. Later Yu-Gi-Oh! series confirm that different pieces of the soul can indeed reincarnate as separate people, but whether this applies to Yugi has never been confirmed.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: When Shadi enters his mind, he sees that Yugi's soul has two rooms, one being his own and the other belonging to Yami Yugi. He even notes that his soul room is pure.
• In-Series Nickname: He is called "aibou" ("partner") by Yami, emphasizing the respect Yami has for him as well as their closeness.
• Invisible Parents: His parents are around, but his mother only makes one (angry) appearance in the manga with some cameos in the anime. His father never appears at all and is simply stated by Takahashi to be away on business.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • In the manga, he's aware that Anzu has feelings for Yami Yugi during Duelist Kingdom. Somewhat subverted in that Anzu tells him that it doesn't matter because "Yugi is Yugi".
  • More platonically, he's distressed at the idea of losing Atem after the Ceremonial Duel but insists that Atem needs to be allowed to pass on instead of lingering in the Puzzle.
• Jekyll & Hyde: The Jekyll to Yami Yugi's Hyde. However, Yami Yugi is an Anti-Hero variant where he'll go out of his way to challenge anyone into a Shadow Game that tries to endanger him and his friends, and Yugi wakes up from memory loss. However, he is aware of the gaps in his memory, and tried to hide it out of fear of losing his friends. During Death-T, when he tells them about Yami Yugi and his memory lapses, they chose to stay by his side regardless because they assure to him that they'll be friends no matter what, and Yami Yugi personally thanks them for accepting him as well.
• King of Games: The Trope Namer ("Yugi" means "Game" and "Ou/Oh" means "King"). Yugi has a natural talent for all sorts of games, partially due to his grandpa owning a game shop.
• Last Episode, New Character: His final Duel Monsters deck has some of these to contrast with his cards that came back for the finale. New monsters in his deck include the Silent Swordsmen, Silent Magicians and the Gadgets.
• Lonely Among People: He's this before he solves the Millennium Puzzle. He's friends with his childhood friend Anzu and has a great relationship with his grandfather, but at school, he's always picked on by bullies like Jonouchi and Honda, and he consequently prefers to be alone in class so he can play games by himself. He hoped his wish to have friends would be granted when he completed the Millennium Puzzle, and that wish came true after solving the puzzle, which reincarnated Atem's spirit into Yugi's body and punished Ushio Tetsu for beating up Jonouchi and Honda, to which they decided to become Yugi's friends afterwards. Yugi also began to feel more confident and brave through his bond with Atem that the emptiness Yugi felt in his life was pretty much gone.
• Magikarp Power: The idea behind his Silent monsters. They start off pretty weak, but gain L Vs (and therefore gain power) as the game progresses while they are in the field. Their appearance also changes every level, from cute little boy and girl wearing armor to mature-looking valiant knight and mage on the higher levels. This reflects Yugi's evolution throughout the series, from a meek crybaby boy to an independent, strong duelist able to defeat the unbeatable Pharaoh and the three god cards (only two in the manga).
• Manly Tears: Earlier on, he's somewhat of a crybaby, but later on he only sheds tears when the situation gets too overbearing, such as when Jonouchi falls into a coma.
• Meaningful Name: Yugi means "game", and ae if it wasn't obvious enough already, he really loves games.
• Mental Fusion: In the 4Kids English dub, Yugi and Yami combine their minds when dueling, except during Pegasus's duel, the latter half of the Doma arc, and the Ceremonial Battle.
• Morality Chain: He becomes this to Yami Yugi later, stopping him from potentially killing Kaiba during one of their duels with him.
• Morality Pet: Starts out as this for Yami Yugi, who becomes less ruthless over time.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The deck he shares with his other half has a mishmash of archetypes and gimmicks to showcase the various mechanics of the game, as the two of them duel the most out of any duelists in the series. The monster cards in their deck include Normal, Effect, Flip Effect, Ritual, Fusion, and as of the final episode, LV Monsters.
• Nice Guy: His defining trait is his kind and friendly disposition, to the extent that in the Japanese language anime, even after Insector Haga threw away his Exodia Cards, he never drops the -kun suffix from Haga's name and sounds more disappointed than angry at Haga's cheating.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His completing of the Millennium Puzzle and unsealing the Shadow Games sets all the shenanigans that happen in the series into motion.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Little Yugi has an at least passing interest in dark and gruesome monsters. Before the Dark Magician entered Yugi's deck, his ace monster was the Summoned Skull, and his duel with Dark Bakura was clinched by Gandora the Demon of Destruction.
• Non-Action Guy: While he may be amazing at games, he's fairly weak physically. Jonouchi and Honda are usually the ones who deal with physical threats.
• Non-Action Protagonist: Yugi was conceived as the antithesis of a typical shonen hero of the time; he is a pacifist whose alter ego Yami Yugi defeats opponents in games, while his buddy Jonouchi handles any physical fights that might arise.
• Non-Player Character: During the final arc, he and his friends (except for Bakura) find the true door in the Millennium Puzzle's labyrinth and enter the Shadow RPG as special non-player characters - ones that do not fit the timeline and have special abilities such as flight, and thus are unseen by the game characters until a certain point.
• Nonuniform Uniform: The buckled straps around his wrists and neck seem to be some kind of custom addition, the bondagey tank top visible under his shirt can't possibly be regulation, and sometimes he wears strange foot coverings which seem to be attached to his uniform pants.
• Older Than They Look: Yugi is meek, incredibly short, and sixteen years old. Would you believe that someone of his height and behavior was really a high-school student? Several of the early chapters play this up for comedy; in one case, a theme park receptionist refuse to sell him a high-school ticket due to his height, much to Yugi's indignation.
• Player Character: He becomes one when his soul gets trapped in his RPG Beast Tamer figurine during Dark Bakura's Monster World Role-Playing Game.
• Perky Goth: Wears leather, a dog collar, has wild hair... and is very cute, cheerful and kind.
• Primary-Color Champion: An atypical example in that he only wears blue - the red and yellow are in his hair.
• Post-Final Boss: For Yami Yugi. He's the last test the Pharaoh must pass to go to the afterlife. Definitely the Friendly Enemy variant.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: His Limited Wardrobe seems to consist of a gothed-up school uniform. Lampshaded at one point in the manga.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Jonouchi's and Dark Yugi's Manly Man.
• Sharing a Body: It's revealed later that he has the soul of a 3000-year-old king living inside him, rather than just a dark "other" personality.
• Signature Mon:
  • Zig-Zagged with Black Magician. It general counts as his Signature Monster, but it becomes more Yami Yugi's Signature Monster than regular Yugi's, especially due to Black Magician's origin story being deeply tied to Atem. Yugi would build a deck without Black Magician and Black Magician Girl to duel Atem, but in DSOD, Yugi plays both of them again.
  • Silent Swordsman, Silent Magician and Gandora the Dragon of Destruction later count as Yugi's new Signature Monsters, symbolizing his character growth and his (eventual) separation from Atem. The latter two monsters also receive summoning animations in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, which is generally exclusive for Signature Monsters. These three monsters are also among the monsters that Yami Yugi never gets to use, making them fully Yugi's monsters.
• Split Personality: Initially, he and Yami Yugi are presented as this.
• Ship Tease: With Anzu. More so in the anime, where she reciprocates to some degree.
• Shrinking Violet: Used to be one, but The Power of Friendship helped him get better.
• Soul Jar: He and the Millennium Puzzle are this for Yami Yugi.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: A less straight example, in that the premise of the story relies more intellectual battles than physical ones, meaning he averts the Book Dumb aspect often associated with this trope. He also is a lot more serious than the Hot-Blooded nature of many Shonen protagonists, but nonetheless does retain the All-Loving Hero aspect and befriends many of his past enemies much like Goku does. Yugi also starts on the lower end of the hierarchy, being an unheard of nobody who was constantly bullied and had to work his way up the top. He also has a very impressive set of Anime Hair that puts even Goku to shame. The fact that Kaiba is a firm Stock Shōnen Rival Trope Codifier only further drives the point home.
• The Strategist: At least in the English dub of the anime.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Definitely in the early manga (and Toei anime). Though Yami Yugi wasn't evil at the time, he was pretty ruthless in his delivery of justice, and the normal Yugi was quiet back then, not even remembering any of the events. During Killer-T arc, the Millennium Puzzle's negative influence nearly took him over during his Heroic BSoD, before snapping back to reality. This actually foreshadows Pegasus' explanation that all the Millennium Items have an evil intelligence (Zorc Necophades) that can negatively control their item-bearers.
• Supporting Protagonist: Nominally the main character of the series; he is often overshadowed by Yami Yugi. He is given a chance to break out of this during his Dragons, Dice & Dungeons match with Otogi, and breaks out of it for good in the Millennium World arc, defeating Yami Bakura and Yami Yugi as well as finding Yami Yugi's true name. He's also this in The Dark Side of Dimensions, as the entire plot mostly revolves around Kaiba's obsessions with defeating Atem and the Plana going against him for such actions, with Yugi getting caught in the cross-fire for being the chosen vessel of Atem, though he at least actively participates throughout the story.
• Tareme Eyes: One of the subtle visual differences between him and Yami Yugi, who has Tsurime Eyes. That being said, through Art Evolution circa The Dark Side of Dimensions as seen above, he's got borderline Tsurime Eyes comparable to Yami Yugi during Duelist Kingdom, though large enough to still be Yugi's distinguishable Tareme Eyes.
• Tiny Schoolboy: The Nice Guy and adorkable kind.
• Token Super: At first, Yugi is the only one of his circle of friends to possess one of the Millennium Items, in his case the Millennium Puzzle. The Millennium Puzzle enables him to access his Superpowered Alter Ego, Yami Yugi, (actually the spirit of an Egyptian Pharaoh who happens to share Yugi's body). His later companion, Bakura, owns the Millennium Ring, which has similar powers. In contrast, however, the spirit contained within it is the Big Bad of the series, which means big trouble for the group and the world.
• Took a Level in Badass: Yugi proves this by defeating Atem in the ceremonial battle. His toy-themed deck is also comprised of monsters ranging in level from weaker forms to more formidable beasts. Furthermore, by the time of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, he's become a full-blown ace duelist whom everyone admires.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Yugi really loves burgers.
• Underestimating Badassery: Yugi is often underestimated in and out of universe for having his dark self doing most of the duel for entire run of the series. By the time Yugi has to duel on his own, most of his opponents consider him merely as the vessel of the pharaoh. Unfortunately for his opponents, by the end of the series, Yugi has grown up to be a very strong duelist in his own right.
  • Best shown in Dark Side of Dimensions; both Aigami and Kaiba consider Yugi a stepping stone on the path to defeating Atem. By the end of the movie, where he finally duels, Yugi all but destroyed them in their own game. It takes three consecutive, physically taxing-duels—one of which is a Shadow Game—before Yugi even comes close to losing.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: The manga ends with Yugi and Anzu's relationship completely in the open, as Atem moves on afterlife, some of Takahashi's mandated materials does hint that maybe, a big emphasis on maybe, Anzu could grow stronger feelings for Yugi in place of Atem, but it is never outright confirmed, not even in Takahashi’s vision of Yugi’s adult life as a game creator in 2016, he doesn’t mention what Anzu’s life is like in her adult years and how that relates to Yugi.
• Verbal Tic: In the manga, "Yep" is his catchphrase.
• Vocal Evolution: Downplayed. His voice in The Dark Side of Dimensions is still the same, but it dips into sounding like a lighter version of Atem in more intense lines. Combine that with Atem's own case of Vocal Evolution mentioned below, and it brings Yugi's character growth full circle.
• Weak, but Skilled: In both physical terms and in that his cards are at times weaker than his opponents, particularly Kaiba. Yugi's tools as a gamer are often less impressive and not as powerful at first glance as his opponent, but he knows how to put together powerful combos of cards and make the right moves at the right time to make critical plays that swing the game in his favor. While he does have some powerful monsters like the Dark Magician, Black Luster Soldier, and Gandora the Dragon of Destruction, he tends not to focus on them like other duelists may with their ace monsters, and is capable of winning games with plenty of other cards.
• The Worf Effect: Several times in the early manga and Toei anime where, despite being a game prodigy, he gets beaten by others for the sake of heightening dramatic tension before Dark Yugi appears to defeat them. Most notably against Imori's Dragon Cards in the Toei anime and manga, and Ridley Sheldon in the Toei anime.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In 2016, Kazuki Takahashi made a special illustration that served as a little epilogue for the Yugi’s canon future, Yugi grows up to be a game creator, moving beyond being just a legendary Duel Monsters player, to fulfill his love for games in general and new challenges; the illustration has Yugi and Kaiba dueling in a game called Spherium, a seemingly complex tabletop game that Yugi created, enhanced by Kaiba Corp’s hologram technology. Kaiba, of course wants to be the master at Yugi’s own game. Also, Yugi made an appearance in the GX anime.
• World's Best Warrior: More like World's Best Gamer, but it still fits. In the anime, Yugi is still considered the greatest duelist ever by the time of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds.

Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler)

Katsuya Jonouchi (城之内 克也; Jounouchi Katsuya) (Joey Wheeler)

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Toei anime), Hiroki Takahashi (Duel Monsters), Wayne Grayson (English), Carlos Íñigo (Latin American Spanish), Pablo Tribaldos (European Spanish)

"Yugi, a long time ago, I stole a piece of your puzzle. When I returned it, I thought I might embarrass myself, so it took guts... But after that, for the first time in my life, I started to like myself a little..." —Death-T arc

^{Click here to see his appearance in Dark Side of Dimensions}\\

Yugi's best friend, who comes from a broken family heavy with debt and in turn, grew up as a punk with no real motivations. Until he met Yugi, that is. He suffered a poor upbringing, with his parents divorcing and living with his alcoholic father, while his beloved sister Shizuka lived with their mother. He used to be a thug and even hung out with a gang led by Diesel for a while. After becoming friends with Yugi, he became more righteous and would do anything to protect his friends or innocent people being taken advantage of. Though not exactly the best gamer in Domino, he develops a better liking to them thanks to Yugi, and he's managed to use his strong points to help Yugi come through in earlier story lines. As the series progresses, he grows a passion for the card game "Duel Monsters", learning how to channel his anger through cards instead of fists. Jonouchi is an underdog duelist who begins as a nobody and ends up becoming one of the best duelists in the world. Hot-headed and comical, Jonouchi's evolution from an inexperienced newbie to a world-class duelist carries throughout the run of the series.

He's best at fighting, self-proclaimed very good at yo-yos, and later on becomes an adept player at the Duel Monsters/Magic & Wizards card game. His deck initially has no particular theme to it, but as time goes on it evolves into a gambling-themed deck, along with Warriors, Beast-Warriors, and support for his Red-Eyes Black Dragon. His trump cards are his Red-Eyes, and, as of Battle City, the powerful Warrior, Gilford the Lightning, plus Jinzo. His favorite card in the anime is the Flame Swordsman, who frequently gets him out of tight situations.

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• Abusive Parents: His parents divorced when he was young and he was forced to live with his dad, who had a gambling and alcohol addict and was often emotionally (and implied physically) abusive to Jonouchi. Jonouchi even had to work as a child to help pay for the debts of his father.
• Accent Adaptation: Since his original speech pattern was rather rough and lacked proper honorifics, the 4Kids translated this as him having a Brooklyn accent.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: His friendship with Hiroto Honda varied within adaptations. In the manga and Duel Monsters series, Honda was a sort of stooge who went along with bullying Yugi per Jounouchi's insistence. In Season 0, Honda was a beautification member who constantly butted heads with Jounouchi over his miserable behavior.
• Adaptational Badass: In the Doma Arc, he's chosen as a Legendary Duelist and plays a significant role in the Arc alongside Dark Yugi and Kaiba.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the manga, he is very strong and does good in fights, beating up Bandit Keith and grab-holding Kaiba by his coat collar, knocking out Saruwatari with one punch, and taking down a Captain Ersatz of Leatherface during Death-T. Every adaptation of the series has made him a little less competent.
  • In Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh anime he was the only one injured during Death-T 1 and Miho saved the day, was beaten up by Kaiba's guards and the model Aileen Rao, got beaten up by the Kageyama Sisters, and rolled a 99 in Monster World out of fear that he'd be turned into a figurine.
  • In the second-series anime, he comes across more as a wannabe badass, getting beat up by Bandit Keith and Kaiba grabbing his fist mid-punch to throw him to the ground, and also comes close to drowning twice in the anime when he didn't in the corresponding manga events.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, which is manga-based, continues the trend, as Jonouchi does nothing of importance, is mocked by Aigami as worthless for failing to escape another dimension and has to be rescued, and even wears a dog suit as he did in the anime to help pay for a new duel disk. Although this is ultimately zigzagged as his mere presence is enough to drive Scud's gang away in fear, surviving in the pocket dimension Aigami trapped him in until he gets rescued by Atem (in the English Dub, Joey got out entirely on his own willpower), and being the only one besides Yugi to keep his conscious as everything was being erased by Dark Diva.
• Always Second Best: Third best, in this case, but a similar principle. Despite all his efforts, he always falls behind Yugi/Atem and Kaiba. Not that he lets this fact get him down.
• Animal Motifs: To his dismay, he gets associated with dogs. Minus the dog costumes he's forced to wear, he's recognized as being loyal and dedicated to his friends and loved ones which is a strong attribute featured in dogs. He also has a friendly and excitable demeanor which also fits with how energetic dogs can be. And in the English Dub, he gets christened as an "Underdog".
• Badass in Distress: In an early manga arc, he's captured by his Evil Former Friend Hirutani and is subjected to electric torture as punishment for his infidelity.
• Badass Normal: He doesn't have a Millennium Item, any super-powerful game pieces or cards, or access to money or resources. He still beats some of the best gamers in the world and becomes a champion Duel Monsters player in his own right, capable of threatening even the likes of Yugi and Kaiba. During his Shadow Game with Marik, he survives a direct attack from Ra. In a high-level "this is no joke, we can FEEL the pain inflicted to us by these monsters & gods" Shadow Game. Giving Dark Marik an Oh, Crap! moment, and he would have won the match had he not collapsed right before his final attack hit.
• Bash Brothers: With Yugi and Dark Yugi (though to a lesser degree) whenever they're dueling together. Being Honda also counts when it comes to physical combat..
• Because You Were Nice to Me: After Yugi stood up to protect him from Tetsu Ushio, Jounouchi decides to stop bullying him and becomes a devoted friend to the boy.
• Big Eater: More so in the English dub, when every meaningful conversation gets turned into one about food. Nevertheless, in both versions, if there's free food going, he's always stuffing himself silly.
• Big Brother Instinct: To Shizuka, particularly in the Virtual World arc where he's desperate to keep her safe and frantic when she's in danger.
• Big "SHUT UP!": He gives on to Otogi's cheerleaders when he gets tired of them bullying him while he's trying to talk to Yugi.
• Book Dumb: Downplayed. Jonouchi's a bad student, largely because conventional schooling just isn't designed for him. Also, given his Dark and Troubled Past; being separated from his mother and sister, taking up odd jobs to pay for his father's alcohol habits and gambling debts, and dealing with the usual delinquents throughout middle school, it doesn't leave Jonouchi with a good motivation to study academically. After gaining a strong and supported group of friends and finding a positive outlet involving Duel Monsters, he managed to graduate from Domino High School at the end of The Dark Side of Dimensions.
• Born Lucky:
  • One of the main themes of his Duel Monsters deck is to rely on coin flips, dice rolls, and chance card picks, and they almost always work out in his favor. The fact that he spends a lot of time dueling against cheaters actually works in his favor here, as methods of cheating at Duel Monsters usually involve subverting straightforward dueling tactics; Jonouchi's luck-based dueling tactics enable him to trump the unconventional methods used by cheaters. However, he's not all that lucky, as a lot of his draws are pretty bad though. It's even crueler in the manga where you see that he had Kunai with Chain in his hand at some point after he was getting ripped apart by Rishid's Serket. Had he drawn it when he had both Jinzo and his Fisherman, he would have been able to take the beast down.
  • Also applies to his life in general. He's shown to be quite lucky in situations that require it (for example, in the Memory World arc, he manages to inadvertently trigger the hidden switch to reveal the room with the Pharaoh's name, with absolutely no clues that it might be there), but, just like with his deck, it's averted due to his terrible family life.
  • Furthering the latter point, in his "bar bet" gambling matches with Otogi in the manga, he didn't have bad luck - if he had cooled his head a little and thought, he might have won those games or never even got put into that situation, to begin with.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Marik does this to him during the Battle City Arc to force him to duel Yugi.
  • Happens in the Capsule Monsters spin-off where he's possessed by living Red Eyes Black Armor. Tea even laments how it happened a second time.
  • Happens during the Doma Arc where Dartz uses his captured soul (along with Yugi, Mai and Pegasus) to serve as his knights while dueling Dark Yugi and Kaiba.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: During the Wild Gang Arc (from the manga and Season 0), he returns to Hirutani's gang and acts coldly towards Yugi and friends. The reason is because Hirutani threatened to hurt them unless Jounouchi returned to his gang. This didn't last since one of Hirtunai's goons punches Yugi out of pettiness.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Jonouchi gets puts through his paces during his duel with Marik, even taking a head-on attack from Ra. Jonouchi ultimately just comes up short after passing out, but after the duel, it's shown that it also took a massive toll on Marik.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • In the Toei anime, he was a big fan of Ryuichi Fuwa for being a famous game show champion. But he becomes disgusted with the guy after seeing how he cruelly pushed away a crowd of child fans on the streets while leaving them in tears.
  • In the Duel Monsters anime, he was a huge fan of Jean-Claude Magnum for being a famous movie star but loses interest in the jerk based on how he tried to kidnap Mai along with exposing himself as a fake action star.
• Brooklyn Rage: Being that his abridged series counterpart is the Trope Namer, he exhibits this heavily in the dub. His accent and attitude are typical Brooklyn-ish ones to mimic his rude speech patterns in the original Japanese.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Used to terrorize poor Yugi alongside his friend Honda, even throwing the Millennium Puzzle in the school pool at one point. But then Yugi protects the two of them from a bully themselves, finding himself on the receiving end of a brutal thrashing for his troubles. This acted as an epiphany: as of present time, the two of them are Yugi's friends, and Jonouchi, in particular, would do anything for him.
• Burning with Anger: Explodes with fire before his first duel with Ryuzaki after a smart comment from the dino-duelist.
• Butt-Monkey: Suffers alot of misfortune for the sake of comic relief. Especially in the Grand Championship Arc.
• Calling Your Attacks: When Marik uses Lava Golem, summoning it to Jonouchi's side of the field, he tells Jonouchi that its attack is called "Golem Volcano". Jonouchi insists that since it's on his side of the field, he'll name the attacks, and hits Marik with a "Jonouchi Fire" instead, with a caption box saying the name was coined by Jonouchi.
• Character Development:
  • Before he became Yugi's best friend, Jonouchi would often bully the kid until he stood up for both him and Honda. It would gain his respect. He would eventually go out of his way to protect him from other thugs and kick the ass of the one who threatens him.
  • In the early manga arcs, he was rather sexist and had toxic masculinity issues to deal with. But after bonding with Yugi, Anzu and Honda, he's able to let go of his toxic beliefs about manhood and develops more respect for women in general.
  • His arc to become a duelist vastly grows. He starts off as a person who wants to learn how to duel but doesn't understand powerful cards, spells, or traps. His original deck is literally filled with nothing but weaker monster cards who he just thought looked cool. After he started adding spells and traps, he only went up as a duelist from there, defeating renowned champions in Duelist Kingdom, making the finals in Battle City, and only stopping due to his own death, and beating Yugi in an offscreen duel after Battle City. By the time of The Dark Side of Dimensions, his goal is to become a professional duelist.
• Character-Driven Strategy: Jonouchi was originally a poor duelist until Yugi and his grandfather taught him how to balance his deck. His decks are usually Gamble Decks; cards that, using luck as a factor, can create unorthodox effects to embolden his own monsters or weaken his opponents. This reflects his street-smart personality, Jonouchi the kind of guy that thinks with his gut more than his head (with mixed results). His signature monster, "Red-Eyes B. Dragon", was won in a bet against Dinosaur Ryuzaki (a duel he only won with the unpredictable effects of Time Wizard), a card similar to Kaiba's "Blue-Eyes White Dragon", but relies on support cards like Yugi's "Dark Magician", thus making him a medium between the two.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Notably, most of his opponents (Mai (formerly), Bandit Keith, Esper Roba, Insector Haga, and Ooka) cheat by various methods. He outsmarts and beats them despite this.
• Closet Geek: While trying to maintain his image as a tough bad boy, his time with Yugi shows that he genuinely enjoys games and toys.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He has a pretty good idea of what's going on, but he has moments where he slips into this.
• Confusion Fu: His strategies evolve with every duel, so you can never predict what he'll do next.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Jonouchi's a poor student and a ditz, but get him in a fistfight or a duel and he will own your ass.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Once upon a time, he was a sweet and friendly boy who loved his little sister. But after his parents divorced, he was unable to see his sister Shizuka who went to live with their mother while he stayed with his father. His father was an alcoholic, negligent monster who wasted his days gambling, leaving the poor boy to fend for himself by taking on part time jobs to keep their house afloat and later learned how to fight to protect himself. At some point, he earned the attention of ambitious gang leader named Hirutani who took him under his wing with the hope of using his fighting skills to strengthen his gang's power. As this happened, Jounouchi was not happy with his situation and hated himself and his life until the day one boy made a wish on a puzzle.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Doma Arc is particularly kind to him. Not only is he an Adaptational Badass, but his conflict with Mai takes center stage, and he gets to share the title of The Chosen One for once.
• Death by Adaptation: In the video game The Sacred Cards, the player duels Rishid instead of him, so he gets to duel Dark Marik. He does even worse than their duel in the manga/anime, getting put into a coma for the rest of the game.
• Death or Glory Attack: Some of his gamble cards, like the Time Wizard and Roulette Spider, can either have great benefits or backfire horribly. Sometimes they can even do both-Jonouchi lost his Duelist Kingdom match against Yugi because he successfully used the Time Wizard's effect, which turned the Dark Magician into the more powerful Dark Sage.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: In the early manga, Jonouchi has many traits that befit the Stock Shōnen Hero archetype that's codified by the introduction of Son Goku (Hot-Blooded, Book Dumb, good at fighting, etc.). However, none of these traits help him out in a setting taking place in a realism grounded setting, where he's just seen as a Delinquent in a similar manner to Yusuke Urameshi, and combined with his Dark and Troubled Past leads him into bullying Yugi until he gets better later on.
• Demoted to Extra: Downplayed in the final season of the anime. Outside of battling Zorc, he doesn’t get to duel in the final season, but is still involved in the arc. Played straight in Dark Side of Dimensions.
• Determinator: His most consistent character trait across all adaptations is to never give up. Proven this when he got all the way to the Battle City semi-finals without holding a God Card, and surviving a direct hit from the Winged Dragon of Ra.
• Deuteragonist: In the manga. In the anime, this position is taken by Kaiba, but Jonouchi is still a solid tritagonist, whose growth into a major duelist is one of the key arcs in the show.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Narrowly averted during his Shadow Game with Dark Marik, where he survives Ra's attack, and almost takes out Dark Marik, only to pass out before he can order an attack.
• The Ditz: Somewhat, especially in the anime. He'll often misinterpret comments or make odd observations.
• Dragon Knight: During his duel with Valon, he gains Lord of Red armor which is modeled after his Red Eyes Black Dragon. He even gets enhanced abilities when fighting Valon who has his own powered armor.
• Dub Name Change: In addition to the name changes several characters received in the series, in the short-lived uncut English dub by 4Kids his name was changed back from "Joey" to "Katsuya", a mix of his names in the Japanese and English versions.
• Dude in Distress: In the Battle City Arc, he's captured by some Rare Hunters and is brainwashed by Marik so he can duel Yugi in a life-or-death game. He even comes close to drowning were it not for his sister coming in to save him (or Kaiba dropping the key in the manga).
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite being an excellent duelist, people still tend to dismiss Jonouchi as little more than Yugi's sidekick. Kaiba is a particularly nasty source of this. What's really bad is the amount of crap he gets from his own friends, which is often cut from the dub. In the manga, his friends are very supportive of him. There's one scene in the manga during Duelist Kingdom, where his friends show that they genuinely believe in his ability, whereas the anime had them unsure and doubtful about his abilities. All of this being said, it's implied that this is subverted by the time of GX — no less than Pegasus claims that Jonouchi is the third best duelist he's ever seen, after Yugi and Kaiba.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: When he is brainwashed by Marik, and when he loses against Dark Marik.
• Dumbass Has a Point: He's not exactly the brightest bulb in school, but he's not wrong with being unforgiven of Kaiba's actions during the Death-T Arc. While Joey does understand the "reasons" from Mokuba's recount of Gozabura's abuse, Kaiba's not the only one who had to grow up with an abusive father, and, unlike Kaiba's wealthy upbringing upon adoption, Joey had to spend his childhood in poverty trying to pay back his father's gambling debts, separated from his younger sister, and Had to Be Sharp when dealing with plenty of delinquents that would pick a fight with him. Yet, despite all those hardships, Joey only became a bully toward Yugi and never used violence against him, meaning that Kaiba's extreme actions in Death-T and his belief of "games being synonymous with life and death" have no excuses.
• Empowered Badass Normal: In the Doma, he becomes the wielder of Hermos. He loses it at the end of the arc.
• Fighting Your Friend:
  • In the anime, he fought Yugi at Duelist Kingdom, and in both versions, Marik brainwashed him to fight Yugi in Battle City.
  • In the Doma arc, he fights Mai twice after she has been brainwashed by Dartz. He is able to snap her out of it but at the cost of his soul.
• First-Name Basis: In the 4Kids version, he's often referred to by his given name "Joey", including all of his friends. Ooka/Johnson even goes so far and calls him "Joseph". Several manga translations also have his sister refer to him as "Katsuya" rather than calling him "Brother".
• Flanderization: The anime downplays or removes a lot of Jonouchi's more competent moments outside of dueling like his ability to brawl, making him look more pathetic.
• Foreshadowing: In the anime, at the beginning of the Ghost Kotsuzuka two-parter, he has a nightmare about Kaiba calling him a dog and wearing a dog costume as a result. In the anime's Dungeon Dice Monsters arc, Otogi forces Jonouchi to wear a dog costume.
• Freudian Excuse: In the manga, his preference for using needless violence and skewed standards of manliness stem from growing up with an abusive and negligent father.
• Fusion Dance:
  • With his Red-Eyes against Valon to become Lord of the Red.
  • He also has two Fusion Monsters with Yugi. Black Skull Dragon (his Red-Eyes with Yugi's Summoned Skull) and Dark Flare Knight (Yugi's Dark Magician fused with Jonouchi's Flame Swordsman).
• The Gambler: His deck develops a definite gambling theme as the series progresses, and he uses more and more luck and chance-based cards to balance out his lack of access to rare cards.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: To make Dark Yugi stop angsting in the Doma arc, he punches him so hard he goes flying.
• Goal in Life: In DSOD, his new dream is to become a professional duelist.
• Graceful Loser: When it looks like he's about to lose to Rishid (who was pretending to be Marik), he doesn't mind and is preparing himself to accept his loss. He even encourages his sister to watch on so she can see how he can handle life's losses.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Has dirty blonde hair and a heart as pure as gold itself.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He tends to explode whenever others mock or insult him, especially if it comes from the villain. It's not rare to see his friends attempting to calm him down or even restraining him.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After losing his Red Eyes to some Rare Hunters, he ends up going to the beach to sulk over his failure. It takes Honda having to rough him up to remind him that his sister is waiting for him.
  • Goes through one after he became Marik's Brainwashed and Crazy servant, but a slap from Mai and some encouragement from his sister managed to snap him back to normal.
• Heroic RRoD: His battle with Dark Marik during Battle City, and successive duels in the anime’s Doma arc between Valon and Mai saw him go through this, thanks to the effects of the Shadow Game in the former and Seal of Orichalcos in the latter he was put through physical agony when he received any damage. Ultimately, because of this, he lost to Dark Marik and was too weak to continue his duel with Mai.
• Heroic Willpower: After being brainwashed by Marik, he fought and eventually broke control over him.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Even before his Character Development, Jonouchi never went so far as to use violence when bullying Yugi, often just taking his stuff, and allow him to stand up for himself. Considering his own Dark and Troubled Past and how malicious the other bullies from Domino High School can be as the Villain of the Week, Jonouchi and Honda are a very, very light example of A Lighter Shade of Black. At the same time, it also shows his Hidden Heart of Gold, and later changes his ways after Yugi stood up to Ushio.
  • He's apparently a pretty decent cook, likely because he's had fend for himself for most of his childhood.
  • He also knows a thing or two about carpentry as he single-handedly makes a life-sized Pop-Up Pirate game for the school festival.
  • His less-than-stellar grades are implied to be less of an academic challenge on Jonouchi's part and more have to do with his troubled and poverty-ridden background as he did manage to graduate from Domino High School after gaining a supported friend group and a positive outlet in Duel Monsters.
• Hold the Line: During the Virtual World Arc, he unleashes many of his monsters to fend off the Big 4 who planned on stealing their bodies despite losing to them.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • He does pretty well against Yugi in their anime battle at Duelist Kingdom, but he ultimately loses when he uses the Time Wizard's effect on Yugi's Dark Magician. The Time Wizard usually weakens or destroys the opponent's monsters, but aging the Dark Magician turned it into the Dark Sage, which not only boosted its stats but allowed Yugi to use magic cards on Jonouchi's turn. Yugi didn't have much trouble after that.
  • Using his Grave Robber and Spider Roulette cards, he's able to turn his opponents' monsters and cards against them.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: In the manga, he makes alot of offensive comments about girls and their bodies. He also casually trades porn videos with Yugi.
• Horrifying the Horror: Jonouchi's unwavering resolve to keep fighting after taking a bit from Ra (which felt like being burned by the sun itself without dying) lets him stand up just long enough to try playing a card, one that would have won him the game if he hadn't passed out. Dark Marik was so terrified by nearly losing that he starts gagging and drooling profusely into his hand.
• Hot-Blooded: Jonouchi will charge into situations without a second's thought, especially if someone he cares about is threatened.
• Iconic Item:
  • His Air Muscle sneakers that were introduced in chapter 8. He wears it to every outfit, which is justified given that a lot of people were beaten up because of it, plus the seller who was poisoned by his own scorpion.
  • And starting in Season 2 of the Duel Monsters anime, he wears a blank dog tag.
• Idiot Hero: In the second episode of the anime and last chapter of volume 7 of the manga (beginning of volume 8/Duelist Volume 1 in the Viz translation), he duels Anzu and loses, mainly because his deck consisted of nothing but monster cards. He grows out of it towards the end of the series.
• In-Series Nickname: He gets called "Bonkotsu" or "Underdog" during the Grand Championship Arc. And in the 4Kids Dub, he calls himself "The Godfather of Games".
• Incredibly Conspicuous Drag: In Season 0, he competes in his school's beauty pageant and pulls off a less-then stellar drag attire. He also mentions that he prepared a bikini ensemble for the swimsuit portion of the competition.
• Irony: Despite his discomfort with anything ghost-related, he's perfectly comfortable hanging around Dark Yugi who's the ghost of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His initial bullying of Yugi is one thing, but Jonouchi's reasons for doing so is quite sympathetic (as revealed during the Death-T Arc) if taking account of his own upbringing, and compare to the level of maliciousness shown by the many early Villains of the Week in the manga, Yugi really had it relatively easy. The "jerk" part is later fully subverted after he and Yugi became friends.
• Killed Off for Real: Subverted. His duel with Marik kills him. Doesn't capture his soul, doesn't trap him in a penalty game, just straight up kills him. However, he's revived not long after by Kaiba's medics and spends most of Yugi and Kaiba's duel in a coma.
• The Lancer: Of the Best Friend variety. Also a Foil to Yugi.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • In the Japanese and Viz versions, he's almost exclusively referred to as Jonouchi. Only his family don't call him that, for obvious reasons.
  • In the 4Kids version, characters who feel contempt for him, such as Kaiba and Valon, will call him "Wheeler".
• Like Parent, Like Child: Although he doesn't realizes it, he's inherited his father's love of gambling as he uses various gamble-themed cards in his deck.
• Likes Older Women: He has an interest in older women. Along with his ongoing Ship Tease moments with Mai Kujaku, he was briefly infatuated with Shizuka's nurse in Season 0.
• Lost Him in a Card Game:
  • Subverted with the Time Wizard, which Jonouchi bets twice during the series. The first time, Dinosaur Ryuzaki plans to use the Wizard in his rematch with Mai and bets the Red-Eyes Black Dragon as collateral. The second time, Jonouchi is forced to bet the Time Wizard in his match with Esper Roba because it's his rarest card. However, Jonouchi wins both duels and keeps the Time Wizard.
  • Played straight with Red-Eyes, as he loses it to the first Rare Hunter. Yugi wins it back, but Jonouchi refuses to accept it unless he wins it back from Yugi, which he later does offscreen.
• Love Martyr: Even though his father is an abusive monster and the reason for his suffering, Jounouchi still loves him and wants to rebuild their relationship. He even believes that earning enough money can help him achieve that goal.
• Love Triangle: In Season 4 of the Duel Monsters anime, he ends up in an unofficial one with Mai and Varon.
• Made of Iron: Jonouchi survives a frankly ridiculous amount of punishment over the course of this series. One good example is taking a direct hit from an Egyptian God and still standing long enough to make the Big Bad of the arc nearly soil himself (and indeed, end up making him throw up afterward).
• The McCoy: Compared to Dark Yugi and Kaiba, Jonouchi wears his emotions on his sleeve.
• Meaningful Name: Alongside Yugi. Combining the “Yu” from “Yugi” and the “Jo” from “Jonouchi”/“Joey” makes “Yujo”, the Japanese word for “Friendship”. Friendship is a major theme of the story; the way that games bring people together is every bit as important as Yugi’s magic powers. So it’s fitting that the story’s most prominent pair of friends spells the word together. This idea was also used to name the card “YuJo Friendship”, which depicts Yugi and Jonouchi clasping hands.
• Men Are Tough: In the manga and Season 0, Jounouchi believed that men needed to be tough and resolve their issues by proving their superiority towards others. Even after befriending Yug, he shows this trait from time to time. Though this gets dropped in later arcs and adaptations.
• More Expendable Than You: In the Legendary Heroes anime arc, Jonouchi resolves to fight the tournament's champion despite having less Life Points than Mokuba and Yugi because he has less LP and feels Yugi's too important for him to go down.
• Mr. Fanservice: Downplayed. There are a few moments in the series that showcase his muscular figure. Such as him wearing a barbarian outfit in the Legendary Heroes Arc or when he was in a coma after fighting Dark Marik. There's even an art piece of him resting in a boxing arena while shirtless.
• Mr. Vice Guy: At the end of the day, Jonouchi is a hard guy to root against. He can show signs of stubbornness or recklessness but he is clearly a good-natured, loving, caring soul who only has the purest of intentions. He is a protective big brother to Shizuka and thinks of doing the right thing first and foremost.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: In the anime, this affects Jonouchi best friend, Honda, who is nuts about Shizuka (even though Shizuka herself just sees herself as Honda's friend). He's also unhappy about Otogi going after her.
• Near-Death Experience: You'd be suprised how many times he's been brought to death's door throughout the series. Particularly in the Battle City Arc.
  • After breaking free from Marik's control, he still ends up chained to the anchor and ends up drowning. But he's saved in the last minute by Shizuka (or Kaiba in the manga).
  • He ends up being struck by lighting after Rishid incurs the wrath of Ra for playing an imposter card. Though he manages to wake up on his own afterwards.
  • He later gets struck by the real Ra during his fight with Dark Marik and ends up in a coma afterwards.
  • During the Doma Arc, he willingly loses his duel with Mai so she won't have her soul taken away.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Played with. Jonouchi is literally seconds away from defeating Marik without even having to use an Egyptian God card, a feat that not even Yugi could replicate, but he collapses from the damage inflicted to his body and mind before he can declare his final attack, making Marik win by default. However, before this happens, Marik is forced to reveal the Winged Dragon of Ra's final ability and is in so much pain and so terrified after the duel that he's gagging into his hands.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: The roguish to Honda’s noble.
• Non-Player Character: During the final arc, he and his friends (except for Ryo Bakura) find the true door in the Millennium Puzzle's labyrinth and enter the Shadow RPG as special non-player characters - ones that do not fit the timeline, have special abilities such as flight, and thus are unseen by the game characters until a certain point.
• No-Respect Guy: Jonouchi gets this a couple of times:
  • Despite being the runner-up at Duelist Kingdom, Kaiba Corp's duel rankings only rank him as a one- or two-star duelist, compared to the 8 stars Yugi gets. The anime implies this is Kaiba being particularly petty, as his name is given as "unknown" or "nobody";
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, Jonouchi and Honda learn that the Big Bad put a $15,000 price on Yugi's head for the Card Professor that beats him. When Jonouchi wonders if there's a price for beating him, one of the Professors confirms that it's only a lousy ten bucks. Jonouchi is humiliated, especially since this arc happens after he not only finished second at Duelist Kingdom but made the Battle City semi-finals.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: At the very end of the Battle City arc, he and Dark Yugi challenge each other to a private match for his Red-Eyes (the manga makes it more unclear whether it's actually happening or just a vision). Takahashi states that Jonouchi won. In the anime, he definitely won, hence why he has his Red-Eyes Black Dragon again beginning in the Doma arc. This makes him the only person to have ever fairly defeated Yugi in Duel Monsters, outside of Raphael in the Doma arc.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Canonically, this seems to be the nature of his relationship with Mai. Their relationship is so close that it teeters on the edge of romantic, but neither seems interested in taking it that far, and Takahashi says it's never gonna happen, though it’s somewhat subverted in the anime, where they have several notable Ship Tease moments; come 2020 and even Takahashi humored the tease a bit, drawing a piece with Jonouchi and Mai on a beach.
• Player Character: During Dark Bakura's Monster World RPG, his soul gets trapped within his RPG warrior figurine.
• Power Armor: Uses his "Aura Armor" against Valon in the anime's Doma arc. He subsequently upgrades it to Lord of the Red.
• Primal Fear: Of ghosts. He has to overcome this when being forced to duel with Bonz. Comes back when Bakura cheerfully tells him about his Occult deck during the earlier parts of Battle City and also during its finals, and Jonouchi's first reaction is to crap himself and hope he doesn't ever have to duel Bakura.
• The Promise: When they were kids, Jounouchi promised his sister that he'd find a way to bring them both back to the beach when they're older and find a way to restore her eyesight.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Kaiba (one of two), Honda, and Mai's blue.
• Reincarnation: In Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, he had a pre-incarnation named Jono.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: In the manga, he follows this trope almost as much as Yugi does, as he prefers wearing it throughout the entire Battle City story arc as opposed to the blue and white t-shirt and jeans he has on in the anime version. He also wears it during the final arc. This is averted in the anime, where he is seen wearing a different outfit for almost every arc.
• Self-Made Man: An ordinary high-school student who worked his way up to professional Duel Monster tournaments with a deck of mediocre monsters and the clever use of gamble cards. Also note that two of his strongest and iconic cards, Red-Eyes and Jinzo, are cards he won from other players.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Manly Man to Yugi's Sensitive Guy.
• Ship Tease: With Mai, which is far more heavily teased in the anime, especially in the Waking the Dragons Arc, where Valon is shown to be jealous of their relationship.
• Shock and Awe: His Gilford the Lightning.
• Signature Mon: Flame Swordsman was originally this for him who also gets much more prominence in the anime and later filler arcs, although Time Wizard arguably was more of a Signature Card than any of his other early monsters. He does develop a deep connection with Red-Eyes Black Dragon, which he won from Ryuzaki (thanks to Time Wizard). Losing Red-Eyes to the Rare Hunter was a massive blow for him, and his Character Development is about him trying to become a better duelist worthy of wielding Red-Eyes, which he needs to win back from Yugi (who won it from said Rare Hunter). The presence of Red-Eyes allows Jonouchi to fight off Marik's brainwashing, and Yami Yugi and Kaiba acknowledge Red-Eyes as his "Soul Card". The anime expands on this, where Jonouchi gets more opportunities to use Red-Eyes. The one theme that remains consistent with Jonouchi since the beginning is his overall preference for Warrior-type Monsters, in contrast to Yami's Spellcasters and Kaiba's Dragons.
• Smarter Than You Look: He's not a brainiac and gets fooled fairly often, especially by cheaters, but he has a serious knack for thinking out-of-the-box, as well as discovering those cheaters in the act.
• Straw Misogynist: Mainly in the manga, he has some negative opinions about women in general which tie with his toxic masculinity. Such as calling Yugi a girl for his weak demeanor and blaming Anzu for not preparing any food for the group during their time in Duelist Kingdom.
• Street Smart: Despite lacking in book smarts or common sense occasionally, Jonouchi is extremely perceptive and has good instincts as well as out-of-the-box moments.
• Surpassed the Teacher: In the Grand Championship arc, he manages to defeat Sugoroku, the one who taught him the basics of Duel Monsters.
• Technically a Smile: In the anime, his infamous "creepy chin" faces, which were inspired by the memetic facial expressions of Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki.
• This Loser Is You: Played with. Of the main cast, he's the most relatable and the series goes back and forth between giving him credit for being on Yugi and Kaiba's level despite his disadvantages and the lack of respect he gets from other characters like Kaiba.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In the manga version of Battle City. While he collapses at the last second before calling the attack that would have defeated Marik, Kaiba privately respects that he fought until the very end and acknowledges him as a true duelist.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: His table manners leave something to be desired.
• Took a Level in Badass: His deck gets a notable upgrade from Duelist Kingdom to Battle City, with more signature cards and his deck's style of luck-based abilities coming to the forefront more often. He also undergoes this during Duelist Kingdom, going from struggling to beat Mai and getting trounced by Kaiba to going toe-to-toe with Dark Yugi.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: In the early arcs of the manga, he was shown to be rather moody and difficult to work with. But later on, he becomes more cheerful thanks to spending more time with friends and people he cares about.
• Trademark Favorite Food: His all time favorite meal is curry with rice.
• Trying Not to Cry: During the Duelist Kingdom finals, he tries to keep himself from crying in front of Mai after losing his Treasure Card. It happens again when Yugi gives him the prize money to pay for Shizuka's operation.
• Tsundere: Male version for Mai.
• Underestimating Badassery: Because of his image as an uncouth street rat who's new to dueling, most of his opponents are eager to look down on him or resort to cheating to beat him more easily. They soon come to regret it when Jounouchi turns the tables on them and ends up beating them.
• Unknown Rival: To Kaiba. Wants his skills to be taken seriously and to be seen as a serious contender. Most of the time Kaiba barely acknowledges his presence. In the manga version of Battle City, after witnessing Jonouchi come within an inch of beating Marik, he finally does acknowledge Jonouchi as a true duelist, albeit privately.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: He and Mai develop a mutual crush, which they admit to at the end of the Battle City storyline. It's never properly resolved because the next time they run into each other is after she's joined Doma—driven partly by her jealousy of Jonouchi's own growing fame as a duelist.
• Villain Killer: While his isn't as high as Yami Yugi, he's set Chopman on fire and knocked Hirutani off a ledge of a warehouse they were fighting on.
• Weak, but Skilled: Even moreso than Yugi. Unlike the rest of the pro duelists in the series, Jonouchi just doesn't have the type of access to powerful and rare cards they do, so he struggles with his low-level monsters and luck-based support cards. But if the dice and coin flips fall his way and when he gets the right cards together, he can keep up with the likes of Yugi and Kaiba no problem. He sheds this a bit as the series goes on and he gets better cards like Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Jinzo, and Gilford the Lightning, but at the same time his deck also starts involving more low-level monsters and cards reliant on luck to succeed.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's deathly afraid of ghosts or anything supernatural related.
• The Worf Effect:
  • He suffers from this in the second series anime whenever he's in a duel against Kaiba. Jonouchi may not be as skilled or have as many great cards as Kaiba does, but he has given every single duelist he's ever faced quite a challenge. He even gave Yugi a challenge in the Duelist Kingdom arc instead of having Yugi be given an easy victory, and Yugi's a better duelist than both Jonouchi and Kaiba.
  • Suffers from it at the hands of Dark Marik, and in the anime's Grand Championship arc, Siegfried. Not an egregious case though, given his near defeat of both of them.
• Working-Class Hero: He has permission from the school to work multiple odd jobs to pay the bills, and is still the case in The Dark Side of Dimensions as he can't afford the new duel disk.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Jonouchi collapses right before declaring the final attack on Dark Marik in the Battle City finals. A less serious case occurs in his duel with Siegfried during the Grand Championship arc. He was incredibly close to winning the duel and nearly succeeded in avoiding Zigfried's last attack, but unfortunately, his luck gave out on him in the last turn.

Anzu Mazaki (Téa Gardner)

Anzu Mazaki (真崎 杏子; Mazaki Anzu) (Téa Gardner)

Voiced by: Yumi Kakazu (Toei Anime), Maki Saito (Duel Monsters), Amy Birnbaum (English), Liliana Barba (Latin American Spanish), Beatriz Berciano (European Spanish)

"Kaiba, you're the one who lost! You say people's struggles are a game, but that's totally wrong! Facing yourself no matter how tough things get, and keeping up the fight, that's what games are really about! You bet your chip of life as if it meant nothing! You lost to yourself." —Duelist Kingdom arc.

^{Click here to see her appearance in Dark Side of Dimensions}\\

Anzu is Yugi's childhood friend. Along with Jonouchi, Honda, and Bakura, she is one of the characters most likely to be seen accompanying Yugi. She is interested in dancing and wants to study abroad after leaving school. At the beginning of the series, she develops a crush on Dark Yugi and becomes obsessed with finding out his identity, having been saved by him while she was blindfolded. At the same time, she appears to harbor feelings towards the regular Yugi as well.

She only rarely plays games in the manga, but seems to have knowledge in at least video game role-playing games. In the anime, on the rare occasions she plays Duel Monsters, she uses a hybrid deck of Fairy and Spellcaster monsters, with her ace being Black Magician Girl. Video game adaptations usually focus her deck on spamming equip spells on her monsters to bolster their attack power to high numbers. Her favorite card in the anime is Magician of Faith.

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• Action Girl: Downplayed. She doesn't take part in games that much in the whole series, but it's noteworthy that she's won all three Duel Monsters duels she has participated in the anime (though she could've lost her duel with Mai had Mai not forfeited). Her biggest badass moment was when she was able to defeat a member of the Big 5, though she did have some help from the Black Magician Girl.
• Adaptational Badass: In the original Japanese, she knew what she was doing when picking her deck before her duel with Otaki, just that she didn't have much confidence. In the dub, she apparently picked an amateurish deck with little synergy between the cards, meaning, logically, she'd have to have more skill than in the original to win despite that. Additionally, her duel record is expanded in the anime, making her one of the few characters in the entire franchise to have a perfect win record.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: She had auburn hair and reddish-brown eyes in the Toei series, including the movie. However, the manga and the second anime showed her with brown hair and blue eyes. In Dark Side of Dimensions, her eyes become green.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: She has feelings towards Dark Yugi's dark and mysterious but heroic personality. Though it's implied that after Atem leaves Anzu grows to love Yugi more.
• Badass Normal: She doesn't play professionally or possess any kind of magic like many of the other characters, but she can keep up with them just as well.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Many of her outfits show her stomach, emphasizing her femininity.
• Beware the Nice Ones: DO NOT call Yugi weak for having a high moral ground.
• Black Magician Girl: When the protagonists are turned into game characters, Anzu typically becomes a wizard of some kind. She's also been turned directly into the literal Black Magician Girl herself. During the Virtual World/Gozaburo arc, her Duel Monsters play style and theme puts more emphasis on spell-caster creatures with high attack values (e.g. Gemini Elf, Maha Vailo, and Dark Magician Girl), the polar opposite to the light-themed, fairy creatures she played with prior.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Brunette to Mai or Rebecca's blonde and Shizuki's redhead.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: At first, she was just brainwashed by Marik to lure out Yugi, however, after Marik gets kicked out of his own body, even before he did a Heel–Face Turn, he picked Anzu as his host until Dark Marik was defeated.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She's noted for having a busty figure, with even Yugi's grandfather commenting on it.
• Catchphrase: During the KaibaCorp Grand Prix arc, at least in the dub: "I need some female friends."
• Chekhov's Skill: During the Death-T arc of the manga, her training as a dancer enables her to predict where the giant cubes will fall next.
• Childhood Friends: With Yugi, whom she's known since elementary school.
• Childhood Friend Romance: She's been friends with Yugi since they were kids and she's also his main Love Interest.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Just don't flirt with Yugi or his alter-ego, and she won't glare at you.
• Composite Character: Not herself but her decks in the licensed games. She is often the user of the feminine cards in the original series that other characters have. Mostly Shizuka's St Joan, but sometimes Mai's Amazoness cards when Mai is using a Harpy deck.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: In the anime. Emphasis on the cold, during her duel with Otaki of the Big Five, every time she lost life points ice begins to form from her feet towards the rest of her body. And even when she didn't lose any life points, Anzu could feel the ice slowly numbing her body, and she had to continue dueling. The ice at one point had made it up to her chest. It didn't help her any that her outfit at the time was ill-prepared for the cold (a sleeveless top, shorts, and sandals).
• Cool Big Sis: To Shizuka, Jonouchi's little sister as they spend a day hanging out with each other. To Rebecca too in the anime despite their differences.
• Cooldown Hug: Delivers one to Yugi (or rather Yami) on two different occasions, first during a duel against Kaiba in season 1, cause Yami was going to cause him to fall to his death, and then during a duel against Haga in season 4, cause Yami was repeatedly attacking Haga's lifeless body (his soul had been taken by the seal of Orichalcos, by that point).
• Damsel in Distress:
  • She gets kidnapped, brainwashed, possessed, or has her life endangered by nearly all of the Big Bads in the series. This even carries over to spin-offs, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! R, where she's kidnapped by Yako to be the vessel for Pegasus's resurrection, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, where Seto kidnaps her pre-incarnation, Teana.
  • In a bit of an out-of-character moment, she gets herself into this role to lure out Dark Yugi in one of the manga's early chapters, putting herself in danger with the Playing Card Bomber.
• Damsel out of Distress: In the four-part "Double Duel" episode. While she fails at affecting her own escape from the Rare Hunters warehouse, she's able to boost Mokuba up to a window so he can climb out and report her location to Kaiba and Yugi.
• Deadpan Snarker: In response to Jonouchi and Honda's antics.
• Depending on the Artist: In the anime, Anzu's breast size ranges from flat chested to well-endowed depending on which episodes you watch—sometimes it just depends on the scene. Her outfit affects it too—her yellow "Spirit" shirt makes her appear flat, her school uniform shows her a bit bustier, her blue shirt changes size around constantly, and in her yellow tube top she seems busty enough to rival Mai. In the original manga she's fairly consistently drawn with a decently-sized bosom, about on-par with the anime's depiction of her school uniform.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Whenever Marik possesses her. Also occasionally pulls it off whenever she's just generally annoyed at someone.
• Dude Magnet:
  • Yugi is in love with her. Honda and Jonouchi have even shown signs that they are somewhat attracted to her. They lifted her skirt once with a ruler, and in Toei's first anime adaptation "season 0", the guys take notice of how well-shaped her body is.
  • "Step" Johnny wanted to take Anzu out on a date for being a Worthy Opponent in dancing.
• Evil Laugh: You can thank Marik for that.
• Flanderization: In terms of dueling style, in the original Duel Monsters anime she was a Fairy-type duelist. Then in the Virtual World arc, a dream sequence stated that there was a Broadway show starring the Dark Magician Girl and that she was a fan of it. For this reason she chose Dark Magician Girl as her Deck Master for her duel with Crump and her deck had a dual Fairy/Spellcaster focus. In her appearances in video games since then, Dark Magician Girt is typically portrayed as her signature card and her deck is much more heavily Spellcaster-focused, to portray her as more of an Action Girl and emphasize her connection to Yugi as a love interest/counterpart. While her Fairy cards haven't vanished entirely, they're usually relegated to being used when she's a lower-ranked duelist, and her stronger decks are the Spellcaster ones.
• Girl Next Door: She's a good and very attractive girl who Yugi knew and found easy to talk to even before he solved the Millennium Puzzle and wished for friends.
• Goal in Life: Her dream is study abroad and become a professional musical performer.
• Gut Feeling: In the original series, she mentions having "women's intuition" when it comes to making decisions.
• Hidden Depths: She's secretly working part time jobs to support her performing dreams. She does this knowing that her high school would disapprove of her doing so.
• Improbable Weapon User: In the manga, she uses a globe to knock out several of Shadi-possessed Professor Yoshimori's teeth, saving Jonouchi from being strangled to death by him.
• Invincible Incompetent: It's noted that her skill in the game is limited, and she's consistently depicted to be at most a casual player. However, given this, it means she makes for a solid underdog on the few occasions she does play seriously in the anime, particularly her duel in the Virtual World arc where she outright defeats a member of the Big Five. In fact, she never loses onscreen, with the closest being her Duel with Mai where the latter had a perfect counter to her strategy but forewent it due to feeling Anzu deserved the win.
• Kick Chick: Given her dancing talent, she's able to knock out opponents by kicking them. This is best shown in the "Pyramid of Light" movie.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In the anime, she was able to defeat one of the Big Five by herself, with a bit of help from Black Magician Girl.
• Light 'em Up: When she does get a chance to play Duel Monsters in the anime, she's shown to prefer Light-attribute monsters.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The light to Mai's dark. (One of two)
• Loves My Alter Ego: In the early manga. Though she does eventually realize she likes both Yugis, and when they are slowly revealed to be truly separate individuals, she becomes confused about her feelings. For a long time, she wanted to believe that the "true Yugi" was a combination of these two personalities.
• Ludicrous Precision: In the English dub of the Virtual World Filler Arc, Otaki provides a number of factoids about her, if only for the sake of exposition. What really qualifies for this trope is neither her height, nor her sneaker-size, but the fact that apparently, she's eaten 216 slices of pizza in her life. Justified (somewhat) in that, as he says, Otaki's job is collecting facts and figures, and that he plans to assimilate her life, but still, ''216 slices of pizza?''
• Magikarp Power: The Fairy monsters in Anzu's Legacy Of The Duelist deck have very weak stats. Her deck is also loaded with Equip spell cards that give her Fairies huge attack boosts.
• Male Gaze: In her Battle City/Virtual World outfit Anzu wears shorts that in some episodes show her butt rather detailed.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: She's this to both Yugi and Ryo Bakura.
• Ms. Fanservice: Though Mai is more pronounced in this trope in personality terms, Anzu is no slouch when it comes to providing eye candy for male viewers. Even more so in the manga, where she gets molested a couple of times and is lusted by several males.
  • Many of her outfits include tight, sleeveless shirts that bare her midriff and show off her bare shoulders, and she often wears shorts or a skirt with stockings that emphasize her legs and provide Zettai Ryouiki.
  • Her "date" with Dark Yugi features her playing Super Dancer (resembles DDR) while wearing very tight, very short shorts, long black stockings, and a tube top. The anime further includes loving close-ups of her butt and breasts as she spins (as well as showing that her platform sandals are kept on here, partly as to accomplish her dream of being a professional dancer she needs to know how to handle dancing in any shoes).
  • The manga and Toei anime include a Water Park Episode, showing off Anzu coming out of the water in a bikini and Yugi being visibly flustered by how shapely she is. The anime makes a big deal of this by having the camera pan up on her body, then showing Yugi blushing and nervous. Seemingly inspired by this, the Duel Artbook has a piece showing Yugi daydreaming about Anzu in a black bikini.
  • She's described as becoming "cuter" in The Dark Side of Dimensions, and is now sporting Grade A Zettai Ryouiki. The improved animation also allows for some bouncing.
• Nice Girl: Anzu is a good girl. Incredibly nice, supportive, caring, and kind-hearted.
• Non-Player Character: During the final arc, she and her friends (except for Ryo Bakura) find the true door in the Millennium Puzzle's labyrinth and enter the Shadow RPG as special non-player characters - ones that do not fit the timeline, have special abilities such as flight, and thus are unseen by the game characters until a certain point.
• One of the Boys: A tomboy who is the only girl in her group of friends. A running joke late in the series is that she states "I need more female friends" whenever she gets exasperated at the guys' antics.
• Only Friend: Was this to Yugi before he went on to befriend Jounouchi and Honda.
• Only Sane Woman: She usually provides the sensible, rational thinking to the group.
• Out-of-Character Moment: In the mentioned water park visit, she's begun to develop a crush on Dark Yugi and deliberately puts herself in danger to get him to appear.
• Player Character: She gets trapped within her RPG Magician figurine during Dark Bakura's Monster World RPG campaign.
• Plucky Girl: She's very spirited. One of her t-shirts even reads "Spirit" in large letters (which sadly got censored in the dub).
• The Power of Friendship: In the 4kids dub, she tends to talk about this a lot. In the original series, Anzu's speeches tend to be more about never giving up, always having hope, having the courage to try even if you might fail, etc. and she does this just as much as the other characters. And in the original manga, she's arguably more badass, to the point where she gets Kaiba to sort of shut up after getting his suicidal win against Yugi during Duelist Kingdom.
• Punny Name: Her dub name, Téa Gardner, is a pun on "Tea Garden."
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She gives a brutal one to Kaiba after he won his duel against Yugi in Duelist Kingdom by saying that he lost the moment he chose to gamble his life and how he's weak compared to Yugi.
• Reincarnation: In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories video game, her incarnation was known as Teana (in the Japanese version of the game, her incarnation shares the name Téa). It's not canon to the manga nor the anime.
• Rescue Romance: In most adaptations, she develops feelings for Yugi and Dark Yug after they save her from a creep who tried to take advantage of her.
• Ship Tease: With Yugi and Dark Yugi. While unresolved in the manga and anime, in The Dark Side of Dimensions it could be read that she chooses Yugi.
• Shorttank: Due to being One of the Boys, she frequently wears tanktops and tubetops as casual outfits, which really becomes noticeable by Battle City.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: To Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom. When Yugi had a Heroic BSoD when Dark Yugi was willing to overstep his boundaries to win, he takes the loss while Kaiba gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. She counters with hers, saying Kaiba lost when while he treats life as a game, Yugi doesn't.
• Signature Mon: Thanks to the anime, she's been heavily associated with Happy Lover and Dark Magician Girl, which also very often given to her in various video games.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In contrast to her love for Dark Yugi, she loves the normal Yugi for being a Nice Guy.
• Soul Jar: She becomes this for Marik when he loses his body, possessing her whenever he needs to communicate with someone. At one point, he even uses her body to fight Dark Marik in an attempt to reclaim his own body from him.
• Team Mom: She's protective of everyone, especially Yugi.
• Territorial Smurfette: Played With. As the only girl in the group, she has a harder time getting along with other girl duelists that they come across. Though the reasons vary between their obnoxious personalities or for making moves on her crush Yugi. But after getting to know them, Anzu will drop her hostilities and befriend them. In the English Dub, Tea constantly wishes that she had more girl friends.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: The tall to both Yugi and Dark Yugi's tiny guy. Less so "tall" and more "taller than the under-average Yugi" causing this to be downplayed.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She is the Tomboy to Shizuka's Girly Girl in the manga and second anime, and in the Toei anime the Tomboy to Miho Nosaka's Girly Girl.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She has the cute girly appearance, voice, and deck but is tough when it comes to standing up for her friends, fighting for herself, and sometimes she had quite a temper.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Yugi loves her who loved Dark Yugi, but can't act on it because he's technically a spirit of a deceased Egyptian Pharaoh. Her relationship with Yugi may be a possible Relationship Upgrade in The Dark Side of Dimensions.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Emphasis on the friend part to Jonouchi, Honda and Bakura. Romantic wise, just to Yugi. Whenever Yugi was being picked on by bullies, it was Anzu who scared them off, or dealt with them.
• Weak, but Skilled: Her anime decks tend to rely more on spells and traps than brute force, whether it's equip spells to power up monsters or cards that can destroy her opponents' strategies.
• White Magician Girl: When the protagonists are turned into game characters, Anzu typically becomes a mage of some kind. In some cases, she has healing and restorative abilities, and other times she has attack magic.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Anzu is creeped out by Otaki's demeanor, and isn't too fond of his icy battlefield. Her choice of outfit at the time might make the latter justified, for she wasn't wearing much coverage.
• Women Are Delicate: Her mental fortitude is not very strong as shown by how often she's possessed. While Jonouchi was able to break Marik's control over him with Heroic Willpower, Anzu had to be willingly freed by Marik after he saw no more use in controlling her. From then on, she's regularly used as his Soul Jar after he's possessed by Yami Marik.

Hiroto Honda (Tristan Taylor)

Hiroto Honda (本田 廣戸; Honda Hiroto) (Tristan Taylor)

Voiced by: Ryōtarō Okiayu (Toei anime), Takayuki Kondō (Duel Monsters Episodes 1-52, The Dark Side of Dimensions, Duel Links), Hidehiro Kikuchi (Episode 53+), Sam Riegel (English Episodes 1-10), Greg Abbey (Episode 10+), Benjamín Rivera (Latin American Spanish), Miguel Ángel Garzón (European Spanish)

"I loitered around telephone poles with any gang I could find, I picked fights and fought with all my strength, but every time I beat someone up, the one I was really beating up...was myself." —Death-T arc

^{Click here to see his appearance in Dark Side of Dimensions}\\

One of Yugi's core group of comrades. Originally just a delinquent like Jonouchi, he mellows out once he befriends Yugi, who helped him with his love troubles and saved him from being humiliated by the teacher. He doesn't directly take part in games much, though his fists do the talking most of the time, and he's also a good shot. The one time he plays Duel Monsters in the anime, he used cards with a machine or military theme. In the anime, his favorite card is Cyber Commander.

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• Adaptation Personality Change: The Toei anime changed his tough character into an uptight, dorky hall monitor who was obsessed with playing by the rules and getting Miho's attention. The second series anime is more faithful to his original manga characterization, but there he has a crush on Shizuka, albeit to a lesser degree.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the Toei anime, he defends Yugi from Jonouchi's bullying by trying to take back his Millennium Puzzle rather than join him in the act.
• Alliterative Name: Hiroto Honda. And, kept with his Dub Name Change; Tristan Taylor.
• Anime Hair: Although not as extreme as some of the other characters in the series, it's hard to overlook that his hair is literally a point.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In the 4Kids dub of the anime, he often disbelieves in new supernatural threats, and Jonouchi has to remind him of the previous supernatural stuff they've experienced so far.
• The Big Guy: Arguably the muscle of the group. Possibly to compensate for his lack of duels.
• Composite Character: In the Toei anime, he is the one who gets brainwashed by Shadi's Millennium Key into a mindless puppet, in place of the professor.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Played for Laughs. In the Toei anime, he gets pissed and jealous of Ryo Bakura for catching Miho's attention so quickly. In the second series anime adaptation, he hates it when Otogi gets in his way of Shizuka's feelings.
• Curtains Match the Window: Notably, he's the only character in the main group with eyes that match his hair color (brown and brown).
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially in the manga and the dub. He tends to drop a smartass comment Jonouchi's way a lot.
• Defrosting Ice King: In the manga, it takes him longer than Jonouchi to warm up to Yugi. He becomes Yugi's friend after Yugi tries to help him out in his failed endeavor at winning Miho's affections.
• Demoted to Extra: Though he was always the least important of Yugi's friends he was still involved in the early manga adventures before Duel Monsters took a level in plot relevance. Once Yugi and Jonouchi were established as the only Duelists, Honda and Anzu became reduced to their cheering section—and since, unlike Anzu, Honda is not involved in the Two-Person Love Triangle, he fades into total irrelevance. The last thing he does of any importance in the manga is trying to retrieve Mokuba's body, and convince Yugi to rescue the Kaiba brothers. He's MIA for a good chunk of the Battle City arc and then doesn't really do much in the Memory World. The anime gives him more to do, though mostly in filler arcs, and he also gets his body taken over by Dark Bakura in the anime version of the Memory World arc.
• Designated Victim: Out of Yugi's gang, he's generally the one who has something bad happen to him, as while he's a close enough friend that they care about him he's not plot-critical enough to have Plot Armor.
• Dogged Nice Guy:
  • In the Toei anime he has a deep, hopeless crush on Miho.
  • Second anime-only, to Shizuka. In the manga, he doesn't show attraction to her at all aside from a time where he called her cute.
• Evil Uncle: Subverted. While Honda didn't get along with his sister's son and even hit him once, he still loved his young nephew.
• Genre Savvy: During the Millennium World story arc, there's a moment where Yugi disappears while the other characters are still discussing what to do to look for clues to find the other Yugi and/or his true name. When Anzu asks where he went, Honda said Yugi went to the tavern to collect information, since a tavern is a place to collect information in role-playing games.
• Gentle Giant: Noticeably the tallest of the main cast (except maybe Kaiba) and is somewhat broad in appearance, but is one of the most loyal and friendly characters in the series (though he's not above berating others).
• The Gunslinger: In the Death-T arc, he has good use of the laser guns. When he uses the real one that can potentially kill someone, he defeats the remaining two mercenaries non-fatally.
• Hidden Depths: The Death-T arc implies he has a thing for spaghetti western movies.
• Hufflepuff House: Honda is well-fleshed out enough, but he's often reduced to the background compared to Yugi, Jonuichi, and Anzu, especially because all three are decent (Anzu) to outstanding (Jonuichi, Yugi) battlers, while Honda seldom duels compared to them.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Any time things get physical, Honda is the one who suddenly has to deal with it.
• Last-Name Basis: In the Japanese version, where he's always referred to by his last name (apart from his nephew).
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: During the Battle City Arc, he lies to Shizuka about her big brother's losses during his duels to avoid crushing her spirit.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: The noble to Jonouchi's roguish.
• Non-Player Character: During the final arc, he and his friends (except for Ryo Bakura) find the true door in the Millennium Puzzle's labyrinth and enter the Shadow RPG as special non-player characters - ones that do not fit the timeline, have special abilities such as flight, and thus are unseen by the game characters until a certain point.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In the anime's Duelist Kingdom arc, he carries the soulless Mokuba and Bakura back to the dueling platform without getting caught by guards while going through a maze with looping stairs that even had Dark Bakura confused.
• Only Sane Man: His down-to-earth personality helps ground the others,
• Player Character: He becomes a Magic Gunman during Dark Bakura's Monster World RPG.
• Ship Tease: With Shizuka, particularly in the anime.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Jonouchi's Red, a bit moreso in the manga than in the anime.
• Simpleton Voice: His original English voice was like this.
• The Straight Man: In comparison to the rest of the cast, including Yugi's friends, he's one of the most normal guys around.
• Thanks for the Mammary: In the anime, Robo-Monkey!Honda does this to Shizuka in the Virtual World when he reunites after getting separated from the group.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: In the manga, he's principally something of a comedic double act with Jonouchi, which is played up in the anime. He rarely is seen hanging out independently with Yugi, Bakura, or Anzu, even though Yugi and Jonouchi get plenty of page time alone together, and Yugi and Anzu as well.
• Those Two Guys: With Ryuji Otogi in the anime, due to their crush on Shizuka.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, and it's rather awkward when almost every comment he makes is to bust Jonouchi's chops.

Ryo Bakura

Ryo Bakura (獏良 了; Bakura Ryou)

Voiced by: Tsutomu Kashiwakura (Toei anime), You Inoue (Duel Monsters ep. 12-41), Rica Matsumoto (ep. 50+), Ted Lewis (English), Michael Crouch (English, young Bakura in The Dark Side of Dimensions), Yamil Atala and later José Gilberto Vilchis (Latin American Spanish), Javier Balas (European Spanish)

"[I am Ryo Bakura. I won't let you kill my friends. I'll fight too.]" —Computer message, Monster World arc

^{Click here to see his appearance in Dark Side of Dimensions}\\

Yugi's gaming buddy from school. Bakura is a shy, quiet and mysterious boy who lost his sister in a car crash some time before the series started. With his archaeologist father usually away from home, Bakura spends a lot of time by himself, or playing RPGs with select groups of friends — particularly Monster World. Unfortunately for him—and everyone else in the series—he's also the holder of the Millennium Ring, and is under the on-and-off control of the evil spirit living inside it. Every time he played a game with his friends, his friends would end up in a coma because of this, causing him to constantly transfer schools. After meeting Yugi and his other friends, they join forces to crush his evil alter-ego "Dark Bakura" in a Shadow Game of Monster World. From then on, the normal Bakura joins the main group in many of their conflicts, mostly in the manga.

Along with his love for Tabletop Role-Playing Games, he has a penchant for the occult, even making a Duel Monsters deck out of it, which freaks Jonouchi out to no end. In the anime he also has a tarot-based deck that Dark Bakura uses in Duelist Kingdom, with his favored card being Change of Heart.

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• Aborted Arc: In the manga's Duelist Kingdom, Bakura mentions wanting to learn more about the Millennium Items, including where they came from, who made them, and how they work, believing Pegasus knows the answer. Although Pegasus does divulge some information on the items to the group after his defeat, Bakura's own curiosity on the subject is never mentioned again, and he never gets a chance to ask other Item-holders about them.
• Accent Adaptation: He became British in the dub to convey his polite speech pattern.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • During the Battle City arc, it's revealed that he's quite fond of creepy things in the manga. In the anime Duelist Kingdom, he was shown being scared of skeletons and such. While both versions have Bakura introducing Jonouchi to his occult deck, the Hyde Plays Jekyll nature of anime Bakura makes it ambiguous.
  • Bakura's fondness for tabletop role-playing games is removed in the second anime, so he's mostly just a duelist and not a general gamer. This results in the Shadow RPG during the final arc not being a diorama he was made to build.
• Anime Hair: A more traditional case of one than Yugi, with long white locks.
• Back from the Dead:
  • His soul infiltrates Dark Bakura's 2d10 dice and ends up shattering them on a critical roll, sacrificing his life to save his friends. In the manga, Yugi rolls a critical and he's brought back to life by the magic of his avatar from the game. Averted in the Toei anime, where his soul was shielded by Yugi's friends and he wakes up on his own.
  • Happens again when Dark Bakura receives a Penalty Game when he loses to Dark Marik, with Bakura's body getting eaten up by the darkness, effectively killing him. Thankfully, when Dark Yugi defeats Dark Marik, the Penalty Game is rendered null and Bakura's body resurfaces near the Alcatraz Duel Tower.
• Badass Adorable: In the Monster World arc, the final episode of Toei's anime adaptation, the anime's Duelist Kingdom duel, and the start of the anime's season 5, he stands up to Dark Bakura.
• Big Eater: The anime portrays him as such, about the same as his evil alter-ego who gobbles down his food like a madman.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Bakura's a genuinely nice, if shy kid. He was also willing to sacrifice himself the instant he learned what the Spirit of the Ring was doing.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Aside from his interest in the strange and supernatural, he is the most innocent of the cast.
• Born Unlucky: Let's just say Donald Duck never had bad luck this horrid. Let's recap, shall we?
  • His sister Amane died in a car crash.
  • He had to constantly change schools, living with the guilt and negative stigma of having his friends fall into a coma whenever they played a game with him because of the evil personality within the Millennium Ring.
  • After Yugi and his other Domino High friends free him of the Ring's influence the first time, he is tricked to give his body up to Dark Bakura yet again so they could escape the underground maze of Duelist Kingdom, becoming an unknowing pawn for the spirit thereafter.
  • At the beginning of the Millennium World arc, Bobasa refuses to let him into the Pharaoh's mind, despite his desire to help his friend, because of the darkness within his heart, which we all know is the evil spirit of the ring. He puts on a smile, and runs away, in tears.
  • Quite possibly the only lucky thing that ever happened to him is having friends that never gave up on him.
  • In Yu Gi Oh The Darkside Of Dimensions, his father died trying to wear the Millennium Ring because the Ring saw him unfit to be worthy of it. And this was when Bakura was a little child.
• Brainwashed: Manga only. During Battle City, Marik and Dark Bakura control him at the same time, dulling his pain receptors and allowing Marik to possess the body later. He doesn't regain control of his mind until he's brought back from the body-destroying Penalty Game at the end of the tournament.
• Cast from Hit Points: His Level 13 White Mage converted his Hit Points to Magic Points in order to keep up a magical barrier to protect his friends from Zorc's attack.
• Celibate Hero: He's the only male in the group that has never exhibited any perverted tendencies, didn't ogle Mai during her first appearance, and dislikes the fact that girls always give him so much attention. According to the Gospel of Truth, he likes games more than girls.
• Chick Magnet: The manga and Toei anime have him often be swarmed by fangirls.
• The Chosen One: In a very unfortunate and literal way. He is the "chosen host" for the Pharaoh and the Spirit of the Millennium Ring's final battle. This translates to him having the "honor" of being frequently possessed by the Spirit and being the one to build the Memory World diorama on which the final Shadow Game takes place.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Is nowhere to be seen in the manga-only (and possibly non-canon) Yu-Gi-Oh! R spin-off, despite accompanying Yugi and his other friends fairly often in the original manga.
• Claimed by the Supernatural: Dark Bakura claims Bakura with the Clingy MacGuffin of the Ring itself, which went as far as to impale its spikes into Bakura's chest so that they would not be separated before Yugi stopped him. In the anime, it was thrown away several times and always returned for the spirit to possess him again.
• Clingy MacGuffin: In the anime, the Millennium Ring teleports back to him after Honda throws it away, and sticks around despite multiple attempts to get rid of it. In the manga he puts it back on himself after being tricked into thinking his other self had turned good.
• Creepy Good: His interest in the occult, ghosts, and scary monsters severely freaks Jonouchi out in the manga and anime.
• Dark and Troubled Past: If we take the manga and The Dark Side of Dimensions into account, Bakura loses both his mother and sister in a car accident. And then his father, who was too greedy to obtain the Millennium Ring, was rejected, prompting Bakura to get the ring himself and become possessed. He then kills Shadi while he was at it. And that is when he was at a very young age. And then there's the part where all of his friends from school fell into comas because Dark Bakura twisted his desires to play with his friends.
• Declaration of Protection: He would give up his life for his friends if it meant saving them from Dark Bakura. Even when he barely knew them.
• Demonic Possession: By the Spirit of the Millennium Ring.
• Demoted to Extra: After Duelist Kingdom in the anime adaptation, along with its Filler Arcs. He rarely appears in the anime when he's not under the control of the Ring, generally has less personality and characterization than in the manga, and some of his dialogue in the manga is given to other characters in the anime. The abridged series makes fun of Bakura's predicament a lot.
• Disappeared Dad: His father is always away on archaeological expeditions, leaving poor Bakura to live alone and deal with Dark Bakura putting his friends into a coma during their TRPG campaigns. And then he dies when he was a child.
• Distressed Dude: He's always the Millennium Ring's first victim.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: When Dark Bakura and Marik in the manga are both in control of him his eyes lose their shine.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After so much suffering, Dark Bakura is finally destroyed and Bakura is free to live his life in peace.
• Evil Counterpart: Bakura's Millennium Ring is the Evil Counterpart to Yugi's Millennium Puzzle.
• Foil: A shy kid with no friends who love to play games and finds a Millennium Item. While Yugi willingly partners with Dark Yugi, Bakura is Dark Bakura's victim whether he knows it or not.
• Foreshadowing: In the anime's duel with the Player Killer of Darkness, Bakura is the only one besides Panik who flinches when the Swords of Revealing Light are played, hinting that the evil spirit is far from gone.
• Friendless Background: He did have a lot of friends, but thanks to the spirit of the Millennium Ring, all of them ended up in comas because Dark Bakura would play Shadow Games with them, causing poor Bakura to transfer schools constantly.
• Game Master: Although never shown onscreen in the position, he loves building game boards and figurines and would play tabletop games with his friends more often if it wasn't for his Killer Game Master Superpowered Evil Side. Dark Bakura exploits this interest and makes him build the Memory World RPG.
• The Generic Guy: He doesn't have much personality in the anime, coming off as simply a polite, compassionate young man with an occasional interest in the occult and scaring his friends.
• Good Counterpart: While he easily contrasts Yami Bakura, he also contrasts Thief King Bakura by extension. As a child, Thief King Bakura was just a boy living his life until Akenaden's army arrived and killed 99 people of his village, and sought revenge against Atem's father and Atem via Revenge by Proxy. Bakura lost his family and his friends were put in comas until he met Yugi and his friends, who never gave up on him. Takahashi stated if Thief King Bakura did not turn out the way he did, he would have been like Bakura.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: His round eyes nicely contrast with the Dark Bakura's narrow ones.
• Hand Behind Head: A bit of a Character Tic. He does it several times in the video games as well as the manga and anime, usually when embarrassed or flustered.
• Healing Hands: Being a Level 13 White Wizard, Bakura's DMPC in the Monster World arc was able to restore the entire party's health.
• Hearing Voices: He first hears Dark Bakura as a voice in his head. He's very freaked out by it.
• Helpless Good Side: After Monster World and having to be convinced to put the Millennium Ring back on during Duelist Kingdom, Bakura doesn't fight back against the evil spirit and is generally oblivious to what's going on, then happily reclaims the Ring after Battle City for no apparent reason.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Makes one during the Monster World RPG arc of the manga. He shatters Dark Bakura's possessed dice by planting his own soul in them and destroying the dice, which also shatters his soul. Bakura is revived by a dice roll and his White Wizard's special ability.
  • The Toei anime has him attempt one, but Yugi and friends shield him from having his soul shattered by putting their souls in the dice as well. He also wakes up on his own after the game.
  • He tries to make one in the anime's attempt to mirror the Monster World arc in Duelist Kingdom, when, having been transformed into the card Change of Heart, he possesses one of Dark Bakura's monsters and orders Dark Yugi to attack him; this would have won Dark Yugi the duel at the cost of sending Bakura to the Card Graveyard. The Millennium Puzzle swaps their souls back, leaving Dark Bakura to take the hit.
• Hyde Plays Jekyll: Mainly in the anime. Good luck telling whether it's him or the Dark Bakura impersonating him at any given time. Sometimes he switches back and forth within the same scene.
• Impaled Palm: Happens during the Monster World arc when Dark Bakura finds out that Bakura had taken control of his left hand, and then proceeds to impale it on one of the game's towers. Later on, his arm gets stabbed during Battle City as part of Dark Bakura's plot, and the same arm is the first piece of his body to disappear during Dark Marik's Shadow Game.
• Inconsistent Coloring: His eye color (and hair color) is never consistent across adaptations. They're blue or turquoise in the manga, green in the Toei anime, blue, purple, pink, or silver in the video games, brown in the second-series anime, and magenta red in The Dark Side of Dimensions.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Even with the death of his sister and mother, losing all his friends early on in his teen life due to his alter ego putting them into comas, his father barely in the picture, being essentially alone in dealing with Dark Bakura before Yugi came into the picture, Bakura never once made a Face–Heel Turn or went insane.
• Institutional Apparel: His Battle City outfit has horizontal stripes reminiscent of a prisoner's uniform, showing that he's a symbolic prisoner of the Ring.
• Killer Game Master: Played with. Even without taking the Dark Bakura's cheating into account, Bakura's shown scenarios of Monster World and Memory World are heavily biased against the players. While the second one was created under manipulation by the spirit, the first was entirely created by him. His creation of the friendly White Mage Bakura NPC designed to specifically aid the players makes him a lot fairer Game Master compared to his alter ego, though, especially since he only created his RPG to have fun, not to actually kill.
• King of Games: In the manga, he built the deadly Occult deck that Dark Bakura uses in Battle City. His skill at gaming in general was used as an easy tool against his friends.
• Last-Name Basis: In all dubs, he's almost never referred to his given name. More often than not, he's known as just Bakura.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: During the tournament finals of Battle City in the manga, he's controlled by Dark Bakura and Marik at the same time.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: A Platonic version of this, Anzu shows a lot more aggression, and has her Action Girl moments, while Bakura is quiet, shy, and likes to keep to himself unless his friends are in danger.
• Mr. Exposition: 4Kids gave him this role in the Duelist Kingdom arc. Most of his lines are generally spent describing what the Duel Monsters do, the basic rules, or what Yugi and/or Jonouchi's strategies are supposed to be.
• Missing Mom: His mother died in the same accident that killed his sister Amane. The Dark Side of Dimensions implies he lost both his mother and his sister when he was at least 4 years old.
• New Transfer Student: His manner of introduction... and turns out to be his shtick, thanks to his Dark and Troubled Past.
• Nice Guy: Bakura is among the nicest of the main cast, which makes his victimization by the Ring all the sadder.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He had a general interest in the supernatural, and bases his Duel Monsters deck around the occult. Jonouchi is terrified when he learns this.
• Non-Action Guy: He doesn't get to play Duel Monsters as Dark Bakura always takes over. Bakura prefers Monster World and other tabletop role-playing games, which he also doesn't get to play himself because of Dark Bakura. He also doesn't get into actual fist-fights like Honda and Jonouchi do.
• Non-Player Character: During the Monster World RPG, Beast Tamer Yugi manages to pull White Wizard Bakura out of Dark Master Zorc, containing Ryo Bakura's good soul. Since he was an NPC made by Ryo Bakura as a Game Master, he was able to move on his own without the commands of the player (Dark Yugi).
• No Sense of Personal Space: During the anime's version of Duelist Kingdom, he spends the first 11 minutes of episode 25 hanging onto Yugi's shoulders after his loss to Kaiba.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The 4Kids dub gave him one during Battle City. After being banished to the Shadow Realm, Bakura survived there on his own until Dark Marik's defeat brought him back. According to the lore, the Shadow Realm has very little food, Duel Monsters can be mentally summoned while there, though doing so puts a strain on your mind, running out of energy while there will shred your soul to pieces, and being trapped there increases the power of Millennium Items. It's also implied the bearer of an Item can leech off your soul for extra power. Despite all those obstacles, he made it out okay.
• Pretty Boy: He's a extremelly pretty guy with androgynous features. He's even referenced as a Bishōnen.
• Properly Paranoid: In The Dark Side of Dimensions, he finds it difficult to relax with his friends knowing Aigami can make people vanish, and could be watching them as they speak. Aigami is watching them as they speak, and he’s got his eyes set on Bakura specifically.
• Put on a Bus: In the anime, he's nowhere to be seen in any Filler Arc, particularly the ones between Battle City and Memory World. Especially strange, as this was one of the only intervals where he wasn't possessed by the Millennium Ring in the animeverse, and he appears along with everyone else in the corresponding opening sequence for those episodes. The Bus Came Back for the final arc, although instead of accompanying Yugi and his other friends to the museum as per the manga, he's still left out of the group and gets chased into a church by the essence/voice of Zorc and gets re-possessed without putting on the Ring in a very eerie scene.
• Satellite Character: After the arc in which he debuts, Bakura gets increasingly sidelined until he's little more than a vehicle for the Millennium Ring.
• Self-Serving Memory: Played for Drama. Bakura's memories of his past has enough gaps to make sense in Takahashi's canonical order: His father sought the Millennium Ring when he was a kid, only to be rejected which the ring sees fit to use him as his host and murders Shadi in the process. Then he loses his mother and little sister Amane at some point in an accident before finding out the Millennium Ring was putting his friends in comas playing his tabletop RPG and that's before he meets Yugi and his friends. Of all the memories, his past recollection of the Millennium Ring is perhaps the only memory he refuses to remember.
• Shrinking Violet: He rivals Yugi in this regard, particularly early on.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Gender-flipped in the Toei anime, where he had light blue hair and was shy.
• Sixth Ranger: In the manga, he becomes a main character after the Monster World arc. The anime had him stick around for the manga-adapted arcs albeit with a reduced role and screentime, but he was absent from every filler arc, most notably the entirety of season 4.
• The Strategist: Aside from his RPG skills, the dub often had him explain to Anzu and Honda what Yugi or Jonouchi's strategies are. In the manga, he also provides expository dialogue and sharp observations on strategies, especially earlier on, but to a lesser extent. For example, when Yugi/Dark Yugi do the Mind Shuffle in an attempt to "beat" the Millennium Eye, everyone else is rejoicing, but internally, Bakura doubts that it could be that simple and that Pegasus may be keeping his best cards in reserve.
• Supreme Chef: When the gang camped out with Mai during Duelist Kingdom in the manga, Bakura was said to be this.
• There Are No Therapists: The Dark Side of Dimensions shows that despite his happier life, he doesn't want to talk about the Ring at all, suffers headaches when Aigami makes him remember, and finally breaks down in tears when he remembers Dark Bakura killing Shadi.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: The anime had him happily eat tons of food at the end of Battle City and on the way to the ceremonial duel.
• Transfer Student Uniforms: In the manga, his uniform is different from the standard school uniform, as it's a lighter color and has buttons down the front.
• Unwanted Harem: On his first day of being the new kid in Yugi's school, all the girls in his class already fall head over heels for him. He actually doesn't like the attention all that much. As soon as he met Miho in the first series anime, he turned and walked away because of how she started fangirling around him. From his reactions, this isn't the first time that he's attracted females. This continues into Dark Side of Dimensions, where Bakura wearily notices a gaggle of girls from school hiding behind a pillar watching him as he hangs out with his friends.
• White Hair, Black Heart: His dark side is this, but otherwise averted.

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