[✐ fan essay] "passive" characters and varying beliefs in yugioh
Below is a copypasta from an essay I wrote elsewhere (and for a non-YGO-watching audience) while rewatching Yugioh over the summer in the original Japanese because I'd only ever seen it all the way through in German. Most of the comments on the YT videos were about the ridiculously bad Hong Kong subtitles on the videos, but every now and then a discussion would pop up. I don't think YT comment wars are supposed to spark this much thought on the reader's part, but so be it.
One of the longest comment-based discussions happened during the Noah arc of Season 3, when three people who essentially have never dueled before in their lives have to play the game without discussing things between themselves or risk dying, essentially. Both of the guys (Otogi and Honda, known in the dub as Duke and Tristan) have a crush on the girl they're playing alongside, Shizuka (Serenity), who has not only never dueled but is the sweet, sensitive type so while she's trying her hardest this whole life-or-death thing is pretty overwhelming. Otogi decides to play to win. Honda decides to play to cover all the mistakes Shizuka may make because this is her first duel ever. He ends up losing because of this, essentially sacrificing himself to save her, which is sort of the culmination of this tension he's had with Otogi - Otogi doesn't believe in sugarcoating things but Honda's consistently trying to omit information/put a bright spin on situations to keep Shizuka from being scared.
Honda's mind spends the rest of the season trapped in the body of a robot monkey, but that's beside the point.
The conversation in the comments was about Shizuka's characterization in this arc, and how she's portrayed as "weak", just because this is her first duel and when someone dies in front of her she screams and falls to her knees. Shizuka's whole arc overall is about gaining courage - she's very clingy to her brother (with whom she doesn't even live) and extremely grateful for everything everyone does for her, but the overarching symbol they use for her is what she "wants to see". She nearly went blind earlier, and this is used as a metaphor: Shizuka has this whole thing about being brave enough to see things - not only physically, by taking off her bandages, but by confronting even things that may make her scared. She's left behind looking after the patients a lot once people start being hospitalized in the non-filler arcs (the duel cited above is the only time she plays), claiming that keeping vigil there is all she can do, and that she wants to give support to the people who supported her but are now struggling themselves. The other main female of the season, Anzu (Téa), also spends a lot of time arguing with the boys and losing about "why are they still dueling? PEOPLE ARE GETTING HURT" and "do you value this game over the lives of your friends?" - Anzu sees people over the ideals the games come to represent for the people playing them. She loses every argument, and even comes to agree with the guys, once Yugi or Jounouchi (Joey) or whoever points out that these games have a meaning for them, and if they stopped they'd actually be letting other people down.
I find this whole "boys believe in ideals, girls believe in people" thing much more interesting than the usual form of this argument - "boys are active, girls are passive". Though I'll admit the predominant message based on the nature of the show seems to be "whoever wins at cards is stronger", just because you're good at cards does not make you a strong person in Yugioh -- sure, as Jounouchi grows as a person he gets better at the game, but Kaiba's "strength" is founded on some pretty skewed premises and Yami Bakura manages to make losing look infinitely more badass than winning every time he does it because he doesn't let it deter him. The whole focus on winning card games just....is also a quite strong influence on the way you perceive the characters.
Similarly, the boys duel, the girls sit on the sidelines, and the one girl who duels on a regular basis almost never wins onscreen - and has her own problems figuring out whence she should draw strength. Would it be cool for the girls to duel more? Absolutely - one of the things I love about 5D's is that, while not as mature as I thought she was going to be, the lead female runs a fantastic deck and has a pretty good win-lose record. But why should that be the only form of strength extolled? The two characters with the most common sense on the original show are Otogi and Mokuba. Otogi's a decent duelist but devotes more of his attention to the game he invented - fair enough. Mokuba never duels once, but when he's not being used as a Plot Point to spur Kaiba to action, he's helping to run a company and he's ten years old. Plus he knows how to disagree with someone out of love, which is a hard thing to do (for the most beautiful example of this I've ever seen, see Heat Guy J, episode 16 - actually, see Heat Guy J for the most beautiful example of anything I've ever seen). They're both passive if that means "don't play cards" or, in Mokuba's case, "get kidnapped a lot".
Long story short, the people doing nothing are sometimes the sensible ones, and it's awfully unfortunate that there isn't a way to make that look 'cool'. I ran into this with Tolkien's portrayal of women too - the most awesome woman in his works, in my opinion, is someone from the Silmarillion who had the strength to put her foot down and tell her husband, whom she still loved passionately, that you are insane and I am not following you on your crazy revenge quest because this is REALLY, REALLY STUPID YOU IDIOT. (And this is a woman the guy met while adventuring because they happened to be exploring the same place! But I digress.) The thing with Tolkien is that, because of the source material he's paying homage to, this kind of character is going to be female a lot. I think it's awesome that in Yugioh the same kind of character is sometimes male - see Otogi and Mokuba, above, as well as Honda, who's often out beating people up FOR GREAT JUSTICE while his friends play card games.
Culmination of my case in point? Marik. yeah, you all wondered when i was going to bring him up. The single bravest thing Marik does in the entire goddamn show is surrender. And they make it work. Marik's whole development arc as I see it is about not giving up - he has a goal and he's sticking to it, even if he's more likely to try lots of little tiny plans along the way than have one Master Plan like Bakura has (which is why Bakura doesn't begrudge losses). Before he finds out what really happened the day his father died, he puts all of his energy towards finding the Pharaoh and defeating him; after he finds out what happens he still uses every resource available to him to not give up on defeating his real enemy - his darker half, even if that means dying himself. If something can't help Marik on his road to his goal, he will throw it away without a second thought - even if that "something" is his chances of getting his body back. (There's also an "accepting responsibility" thing since Yami Marik is, you know, him, which is understandably stressed more but I found it interesting that the crafty persistence remained).
He is of course snapped out of not caring about dying, struggles to get the body back and manages to win that fight - but not the duel he was in at the time. He has one point left. And what does he do? He gives up. He surrenders. After five years of stupid obstinate revenge quest and being so thoroughly focused on one goal that I joke "if you poke canon!Marik, the plot falls out", the way that he can actually win against the thing he should have been hunting down all this time is to surrender at something.
I don't know if that has greater symbolic implications for the way one should live one's life or not. I'm not sure I would want to take life-lesson advice from Yugioh in the first place (unless it was 5D's: PUNCH EVERYTHING! AND THEN PLAY A CARD GAME! ON MOTORCYCLES!). I just think that's a really neat touch - when all's said and done, Marik wins by giving up. The irony pleases me greatly.
So uh, long story short, teal deer, whatever? I think it'd be cool if more female characters had the whole "fiery ideals! Card games! YEAAAH" aspect to their personality - it'd keep the show from feeling so unbalanced the way it does, though I understand the target audience contributes to the slant towards the active, fiery, beliefs-driven male. And there's no denying that the active characters are naturally going to be more interesting. That's how narrative works. We're drawn to people who do things, and because they interest us we see them in a more positive light. Marik doesn't get to do a whole lot after his arc concludes - he just stands there while I laugh at his new outfit since he's apparently trying to go for biker dude and failing. (What that says about fate - his job, which he hated for most of his life, is done, so now he just gets to stand there looking pretty, as opposed to doing things looking pretty, is problematic but I don't want to open the can of worms that is fatalism in Yugioh right now.)
But I'd also like to applaud the little moments when NOT acting traditionally "active" is the smarter way to go - making everyone act the way the majority of the boys act doesn't feel like a balance if some of the guys aren't swaying the other way and learning from the girls' example, because the girls are some pretty persistent chicks themselves - it doesn't necessarily come easy to them, but doesn't that make their efforts mean more? Shizuka has the longest to go, but she learns. She grows. Anzu may feel that all she can do for her friends is be there, but then goddamnit is she ever gonna BE THERE. Marik has to lose at cards before he can win at life.
Or maybe instead of thinking about all this since it is a show with a very silly premise, the moral of the story should just be "everyone should go out and buy leather pants". I'll have you know mine are quite comfy.
In other news, watch this space for far more ficlets about Isis than anyone has ever written before, starting tomorrow. My goal is a short story a day, even if I only have time for a drabble. I'm going to get this woman's voice down if it's the last thing I do.
One of the longest comment-based discussions happened during the Noah arc of Season 3, when three people who essentially have never dueled before in their lives have to play the game without discussing things between themselves or risk dying, essentially. Both of the guys (Otogi and Honda, known in the dub as Duke and Tristan) have a crush on the girl they're playing alongside, Shizuka (Serenity), who has not only never dueled but is the sweet, sensitive type so while she's trying her hardest this whole life-or-death thing is pretty overwhelming. Otogi decides to play to win. Honda decides to play to cover all the mistakes Shizuka may make because this is her first duel ever. He ends up losing because of this, essentially sacrificing himself to save her, which is sort of the culmination of this tension he's had with Otogi - Otogi doesn't believe in sugarcoating things but Honda's consistently trying to omit information/put a bright spin on situations to keep Shizuka from being scared.
Honda's mind spends the rest of the season trapped in the body of a robot monkey, but that's beside the point.
The conversation in the comments was about Shizuka's characterization in this arc, and how she's portrayed as "weak", just because this is her first duel and when someone dies in front of her she screams and falls to her knees. Shizuka's whole arc overall is about gaining courage - she's very clingy to her brother (with whom she doesn't even live) and extremely grateful for everything everyone does for her, but the overarching symbol they use for her is what she "wants to see". She nearly went blind earlier, and this is used as a metaphor: Shizuka has this whole thing about being brave enough to see things - not only physically, by taking off her bandages, but by confronting even things that may make her scared. She's left behind looking after the patients a lot once people start being hospitalized in the non-filler arcs (the duel cited above is the only time she plays), claiming that keeping vigil there is all she can do, and that she wants to give support to the people who supported her but are now struggling themselves. The other main female of the season, Anzu (Téa), also spends a lot of time arguing with the boys and losing about "why are they still dueling? PEOPLE ARE GETTING HURT" and "do you value this game over the lives of your friends?" - Anzu sees people over the ideals the games come to represent for the people playing them. She loses every argument, and even comes to agree with the guys, once Yugi or Jounouchi (Joey) or whoever points out that these games have a meaning for them, and if they stopped they'd actually be letting other people down.
I find this whole "boys believe in ideals, girls believe in people" thing much more interesting than the usual form of this argument - "boys are active, girls are passive". Though I'll admit the predominant message based on the nature of the show seems to be "whoever wins at cards is stronger", just because you're good at cards does not make you a strong person in Yugioh -- sure, as Jounouchi grows as a person he gets better at the game, but Kaiba's "strength" is founded on some pretty skewed premises and Yami Bakura manages to make losing look infinitely more badass than winning every time he does it because he doesn't let it deter him. The whole focus on winning card games just....is also a quite strong influence on the way you perceive the characters.
Similarly, the boys duel, the girls sit on the sidelines, and the one girl who duels on a regular basis almost never wins onscreen - and has her own problems figuring out whence she should draw strength. Would it be cool for the girls to duel more? Absolutely - one of the things I love about 5D's is that, while not as mature as I thought she was going to be, the lead female runs a fantastic deck and has a pretty good win-lose record. But why should that be the only form of strength extolled? The two characters with the most common sense on the original show are Otogi and Mokuba. Otogi's a decent duelist but devotes more of his attention to the game he invented - fair enough. Mokuba never duels once, but when he's not being used as a Plot Point to spur Kaiba to action, he's helping to run a company and he's ten years old. Plus he knows how to disagree with someone out of love, which is a hard thing to do (for the most beautiful example of this I've ever seen, see Heat Guy J, episode 16 - actually, see Heat Guy J for the most beautiful example of anything I've ever seen). They're both passive if that means "don't play cards" or, in Mokuba's case, "get kidnapped a lot".
Long story short, the people doing nothing are sometimes the sensible ones, and it's awfully unfortunate that there isn't a way to make that look 'cool'. I ran into this with Tolkien's portrayal of women too - the most awesome woman in his works, in my opinion, is someone from the Silmarillion who had the strength to put her foot down and tell her husband, whom she still loved passionately, that you are insane and I am not following you on your crazy revenge quest because this is REALLY, REALLY STUPID YOU IDIOT. (And this is a woman the guy met while adventuring because they happened to be exploring the same place! But I digress.) The thing with Tolkien is that, because of the source material he's paying homage to, this kind of character is going to be female a lot. I think it's awesome that in Yugioh the same kind of character is sometimes male - see Otogi and Mokuba, above, as well as Honda, who's often out beating people up FOR GREAT JUSTICE while his friends play card games.
Culmination of my case in point? Marik. yeah, you all wondered when i was going to bring him up. The single bravest thing Marik does in the entire goddamn show is surrender. And they make it work. Marik's whole development arc as I see it is about not giving up - he has a goal and he's sticking to it, even if he's more likely to try lots of little tiny plans along the way than have one Master Plan like Bakura has (which is why Bakura doesn't begrudge losses). Before he finds out what really happened the day his father died, he puts all of his energy towards finding the Pharaoh and defeating him; after he finds out what happens he still uses every resource available to him to not give up on defeating his real enemy - his darker half, even if that means dying himself. If something can't help Marik on his road to his goal, he will throw it away without a second thought - even if that "something" is his chances of getting his body back. (There's also an "accepting responsibility" thing since Yami Marik is, you know, him, which is understandably stressed more but I found it interesting that the crafty persistence remained).
He is of course snapped out of not caring about dying, struggles to get the body back and manages to win that fight - but not the duel he was in at the time. He has one point left. And what does he do? He gives up. He surrenders. After five years of stupid obstinate revenge quest and being so thoroughly focused on one goal that I joke "if you poke canon!Marik, the plot falls out", the way that he can actually win against the thing he should have been hunting down all this time is to surrender at something.
I don't know if that has greater symbolic implications for the way one should live one's life or not. I'm not sure I would want to take life-lesson advice from Yugioh in the first place (unless it was 5D's: PUNCH EVERYTHING! AND THEN PLAY A CARD GAME! ON MOTORCYCLES!). I just think that's a really neat touch - when all's said and done, Marik wins by giving up. The irony pleases me greatly.
So uh, long story short, teal deer, whatever? I think it'd be cool if more female characters had the whole "fiery ideals! Card games! YEAAAH" aspect to their personality - it'd keep the show from feeling so unbalanced the way it does, though I understand the target audience contributes to the slant towards the active, fiery, beliefs-driven male. And there's no denying that the active characters are naturally going to be more interesting. That's how narrative works. We're drawn to people who do things, and because they interest us we see them in a more positive light. Marik doesn't get to do a whole lot after his arc concludes - he just stands there while I laugh at his new outfit since he's apparently trying to go for biker dude and failing. (What that says about fate - his job, which he hated for most of his life, is done, so now he just gets to stand there looking pretty, as opposed to doing things looking pretty, is problematic but I don't want to open the can of worms that is fatalism in Yugioh right now.)
But I'd also like to applaud the little moments when NOT acting traditionally "active" is the smarter way to go - making everyone act the way the majority of the boys act doesn't feel like a balance if some of the guys aren't swaying the other way and learning from the girls' example, because the girls are some pretty persistent chicks themselves - it doesn't necessarily come easy to them, but doesn't that make their efforts mean more? Shizuka has the longest to go, but she learns. She grows. Anzu may feel that all she can do for her friends is be there, but then goddamnit is she ever gonna BE THERE. Marik has to lose at cards before he can win at life.
Or maybe instead of thinking about all this since it is a show with a very silly premise, the moral of the story should just be "everyone should go out and buy leather pants". I'll have you know mine are quite comfy.
In other news, watch this space for far more ficlets about Isis than anyone has ever written before, starting tomorrow. My goal is a short story a day, even if I only have time for a drabble. I'm going to get this woman's voice down if it's the last thing I do.