Discussion YMMV / YuGiOhTheDarkSideOfDimensions

In the original Japanese movie, Kaiba specifically says Atem will be a prisoner of battle. Likewise, Kaiba's devastated expression, an expression most fans identify as him being devastated, happens regardless of Atem appearing later on in the film. Kaiba is a woobie in that moment, because Atem did not come back.

Could you please point out where in the fandom Aigami is causing discourse? I've never seen it myself. The discussion has always been very mild, and I've seen most fans being "meh" about him. I think "base breaking" should really indicate a harsh divide; otherwise every character would be included. I really haven't seen anything harsh in regards to this character's popularity/lack thereof. If you want to put it back, then okay, but I can say for myself I'm in the middle with him.

I don't recall that line in the subbed version, but I'll take your word for it.

Generally it's Bakura fans who either love Aigami (especially the shippers) or hate him for his role in Bakura's backstory (particularly Yami Bakura fans, who see it as contradictory to YB's character or see Aigami as dumb for not telling them apart, and Ryou fans for making him cry), and I've seen Marik/TKB fans annoyed with him for combining aspects of those characters in a shorter timespan, though I've also seen Marik fans who say Aigami is Marik done right since he's not really forgiven and what happens to him is a direct result of his actions. I think people's opinions of Aigami also depend on whether they liked/disliked the movie as a whole.

I don't really like him as a character but I do like his design and voice XD;

If you feel you've seen enough discourse with the character, you can add it back. But I feel in the broader fandom, Aigami's reception has been mild. I think my issue with that entry was it implied more discourse than there is.

Makes sense. I'll add a caveat that it's mainly Bakura fans XD;

There's a couple different translations for the designer's comments on Kaiba.

"Kaiba hasn't changed much from the original story. Though, if I had to say, his expressions are more in the akin to the slightly demented ones he had around the time he was just introduced. In the original story, through his battles with Dark Yugi, the darkness in his heart dissolved in a gradual sense. That being said, the man who served as his rival, Dark Yugi, disappeared in the Battle Ceremony, and, as an effect, caused the madness to resurface in his eyes."

"Kaiba hasn’t changed much since the original series. If anything, his expression shows a little bit of madness like when he first appeared. By dueling Yami Yugi in the original series the darkness in his heart grew fainter and fainter. However, he lost his rival, Yami Yugi, in the Ceremonial Battle and as its effect madness has appeared in his eyes once again."

Going just by the manga, when he first appeared he stole the Blue-Eyes and switched it out with another one, cheated during the duel, and hit Yugi with his briefcase. Then when he lost he made Death-T to kill Yugi (and his friends). I wouldn't say he's slipped THAT far back, but comparing DSOD Kaiba to late Battle City Kaiba there's definitely some regression there, from "what do I do now? Can i let go of my hatred?" as he looks at the locket to "must duel Atem at all costs." Or maybe given his actions even in Battle City he was a jerk and stayed one.

Kaiba is confusing.

There's also what we see in the movie itself, like Kaiba calling Yugi just a vessel for the Pharaoh's spirit who he thinks won't pose a challenge at all, digging up and reassembling the Puzzle, and doing everything he can between the six months and the movie to see and duel the Pharaoh again. His only stated motive, if there is one, is to be king of the Duel Links system as seen in Transcend Game (we know WHAT he wants but not really WHY, which is frustrating to me).

Official summaries for the movie also said something like "Kaiba and Yugi duel and bet their pride and mutual experience."

Right, this all makes him an antagonist (and jerk lol), but not necessarily a villain. And even in battle city, he wouldn't have fit the bill of proper villain then either. Just an antagonist.

Which matters, because it's the difference between "Kaiba seems to be playing more of a villainous role" and "Kaiba has been stated to have regressed into a villainous role" which mean two very different things.

Also, not for anything, but it's actually very rare that the people closest to the story ever write the summary. That job usually falls to marketing, which is why some can seem so generic or feel as though they have very little to do with the plot.

As for the motive, since you brought it up, being king of duel links was only mentioned once, on about the third page, in the last chapter, and after a lot of layup about his excitement for the system in general throughout the entirety of the first. So... I'm pretty sure that wasn't his motive, or even something he stayed up late freaking out over. He just considered it a natural result that would occur once the system was done. He actually doesn't even mention it once again for the rest of the chapter*, and with the way he reacts to the possibility of a gateway ("YES! THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!") we could even surmise Duel Links itself was more like a project done in tandem with his already in progress search for a way to get into the afterlife to face Atem.

• I double checked my copies of TRANSCEND to make sure I was right on that, and yeah. Kaiba doesn't mention anything about being king in the first chapter, he just talks about the project and what it means for the world, and only mentions ruling as king offhandedly once in the second/last chapter.

Even his expressions when talking about each thing

http://imgur.com/tmW5BCS

http://imgur.com/uEDBIzQ

make it obvious which one he actually cares (more) about. whereas if it was just the pride thing, he'd be equally as excited (or close to it) both times, because they would both be excited reactions at the thought of being king.

Why am I incapable of keeping my TG/DSOD talk down to three paragraphs..

That is not a healthy expression to wear when thinking about going to the afterlife XD; Man, poor Kaiba.

I searched a bunch of recaps, character pages, interviews, and summaries of the movie, as well as Transcend Game, but still couldn't get a proper motive for why Kaiba does what he does. I think maybe since when people think of Kaiba they think of him as "Yugi's rival" first,"Mokuba's brother" second, the movie just takes it to its logical conclusion. Most of his character development seemed to happen off-panel in the manga—there was the moment where he empathized with Ishizu over wanting to stay if Marik couldn't be saved, but immediately after that he's all "This will PROVE miracles don't happen!"

I found an analysis OF an analysis for DSOD Kaiba specifically XD; http://themillenniumscribe.tumblr.com/post/143879573950/

From what I can tell most people that are really, REALLY happy with the movie and see the ending as sweet, heartwarming, or romantic are people that ship Kaiba and Yami Yugi. XD; Mokuba fans are really sad about the whole thing.

Before DSOD people could be divided into “I love Kaiba,” “I like Kaiba,” “I’m neutral towards Kaiba,” “I dislike Kaiba,” and “I hate Kaiba,” all fairly clean-cut. But AFTER DSOD, we have stuff like “I like Kaiba except in DSOD,” “I used to like Kaiba but now I don’t as much because of DSOD,” “DSOD made me like Kaiba,” “Kaiba was in-character in DSOD,” “Kaiba was not in-character in DSOD,” “DSOD makes more sense for manga Kaiba,” “DSOD makes more sense for anime Kaiba,” etc.

And that’s just ONE character as opposed to the rest of the cast, who also had very polarizing stuff happen in the movie.

I can see being sad for Mokuba, if one goes for the saddest interpretation of the end, but Kaiba has always been selfish even while still attempting to do what he feels is the best for Mokuba in that selfishness. In this case, that means making sure Mokuba would never have to be dependent upon him again, since he intends on doing what he must for his cause no matter the risk.

The part I don't understand is that stories rarely *tell* you the motivation, as that would be somewhat annoying and almost belittling to the viewer, and even in the main series most people's motives are inferred rather than explicitly said because that's how stories work. That part of battle city, where he seems to flip flop multiple times on whether he really is trying to help or is just trying to prove them all wrong, is because he's having a genuine conflict. He wants to believe it'll work, he wants to be proven wrong, which is why he lets Atem get away with breaking the rules to see if he really did draw the card. But he defaults to the 'wanting to prove them wrong' because it's safer for him. Kaiba is a very delicate and defensive personality due to his upbringing. This isn't explicitly told to you either, but it's also able to be inferred by the context, which is why the explanation for his general behavior is something readily accepted by fans as if it had been. Context clues!

So I don't see why Kaiba specifically in this movie should be the exception to trying to find the motives for characters, and it's strange to me that people would sooner think Takahashi just messed up massively for no reason instead of that Kaiba might have felt a deep enough friendship for Atem to really feel his loss. Which is an especially odd aversion for fans of a series where deep friendships are a core theme and frequent motivator. It's almost like people are afraid to consider that possibility because, as you say, it's one frequently applied by shippers.

But I personally find that to be a very silly reason to instead say "Takahashi just doesn't know Kaiba as well as me!" or something, when the very same ideas for motive applies to them just having a friendship.

And I think that last part is the clincher, for me. If this were someone else's movie, I could understand. But Takahashi himself did this movie, and I don't think it's right to dismiss a completely reasonable explanation in favor of saying Takahashi just doesn't know his own characters after so many years with them. Not that you are saying this, but the people who claim he's being very OOC. It's Takahashi's character, he chose to come out of retirement to do this, I think he knew what he was doing.

People HAVE said that Takahashi doesn't get Kaiba before XD; I think it's mainly doe to manga-anime differences but also because it's been 20 years since the manga first ran and he was starting to forget how it went. Manga-Joey fans weren't too happy with the movie since he was closer to anime-Joey in terms of characterization and skills. But that is not Kaiba-related. XD

If this is about whether Kaiba can be considered a 'villain protagonist' or whatever the exact trope is, I can probably offer some opinion, having seen the dub.

I went in expecting from the summaries to feel like Kaiba would be responsible for everything bad that happened and he wouldn't try and fix it, because that's Kaiba. While he doesn't go out of his way to fix the damage Aigami causes, I wouldn't say he's responsible for it either. The villain of the movie is really Aigami, and Kaiba and Aigami first meet a fair way into the film, so Seto arguably didn't know about all the chaos his trying to put the Puzzle together again would cause.

I'd agree with theoddkoala that he's not OOC since he doesn't seem to care about winning back the title or proving himself the best this time. That's admittedly mostly subtext in the dub, but from what I've read of the sub text from summaries, it's not a regression in the sense that he willingly admits victory can be meaningless, which is something Battle City Kaiba struggled with, anime and manga.

That and after 20 years the fans might be rusty too on some of the series' developments.

Just my two cents

The problem is we have editors who clearly dislike the movie and editors who clearly enjoy the movie. I agree a note should be made about the Instagram image, but with special attention drawn to it being a "possible future." Let the reader draw their own conclusion. If it's fair game to reference promotional material and interviews, Instagram should be fair game too.

Aye, especially when it's Kaz himself posting it.

I think as long as the possible future thing is mentioned it can go back up ^^ The YB thing was something I saw from someone who liked the movie as a whole but noted that they said the Ring possessed/corrupted Bakura, not the spirit IN the Ring, plus with how it acts post-series when Zorc/YB are gone.

The manga also says things like "I know the Millennium Ring and Ryo are two minds in one body, like us," "So the Millennium Ring’s other personality let you win," and "It wasn’t Ryo he was fighting, it was the Ring," plus Pegasus's statement that the Items themselves have evil intelligences. I always thought that was part of Zorc and would go away once he died, like everything else that was part of Zorc, but I guess not. XD

I think the whole movie is a base breaker, especially where Kaiba's concerned. Poor Mokuba fans XD I don't HATE DSOD, I'm just... confused and saddened by a lot of it, especially where Ryou, Yugi, Seto, Joey, and Mokuba are concerned.

We may have to wait for the subs to get some clarification, as well.

Kinda unrelated but also kinda funny, I remember some edits a while back to the character pages about how YB wanting Mokuba's body made no sense in the anime cause "Ryo was the Ring's destined host in the manga and it couldn't let him die/let anyone else wear it" and all, and now DSOD has the Ring try to kill Ryo while someone else wears it.

I didn't realize that it was such a base breaker; I just effing loved it.

Yeah, it's pretty polarizing XD I've seen hardcore manga fans who HATE it for Joey's scenes and Ryou's scenes, hardcore anime fans who hate it for Kaiba's obsessions and the ending, people who like it, people who love it, as well as hardcore shippers who are like "My ship is canon guys!" Seeing all the reactions has been a mix of fun and kinda scary.