Yu-Gi-Oh! has finally arrived to its seventh series in the franchise, from DM (Duel Monsters), GX [Generation neXt], 5D's [5 Dragons], ZEXAL (Zeal), ARC-V (Arc Five), VRAINS [Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Network System] to SEVENS (Sevens).
To commemorate this, I post an article that features the protagonists of all the seven series together, in which I will discuss about the characteristics, the paradigms of Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists.
Before I proceed to the topic, pertaining to the image above, it was made exclusively for this post.
The protagonists in the image were all adapted from official sources.
Mutō Yūgi (Yami Yūgi) was from the Duel Links mobile game, hair and eye colors modified to match those of the anime counterpart, while Yūki Jūdai, Fudō Yūsei, Tsukumo Yūma, Sakaki Yūya were all from the Tag Force video games, whereas Fujiki Yūsaku and Ōdō Yūga were from the official anime character illustrations.
For the backgrounds, the gradient colors were not randomly picked, but picked in the way that they are pertinent to the protagonists.
Yūgi is purple for his purple-magenta hair, and being the keeper of darkness, Jūdai is red for the color of his choice of clothing, the Osiris Red jacket and his enthusiastic personality, Yūsei is dark-blue for his blue jacket and his calm personality, Yūma is magenta for his prominent red-magenta spiked hair and his energetic personality, Yūya is green for that the green prominent part of his hair and his lively personality, Yūsaku is light-blue for his prominent light-blue bangs with pink accents and cold personality, lastly, Yūga is orange for his seemingly fiery fervor, also for that his red-orange hair, although that's not the prominent part of his hairstyle.
Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists have numerous noteworthy patterns.
Above all, the most notable pattern for the protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh! is in their names.
Name is an significant aspect in Yu-Gi-Oh!, which we can see this in the card game as well, as a card series or category is designated by the card names, and that in the name of the pharaoh, "Atem", Atem summoned Horakhty and won against Zorc.
All Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists have the kanji character, 「遊」, phonetic "Yū", in their names, in the same manner to "Yu" 「遊」 of Yu-Gi-Oh! 遊☆戯☆王, with the exception of Jūdai, who doesn't have his name starts with "Yū", instead he has his surname, "Yūki" 「遊城」, which starts with "Yū", also Yūsaku has an alias, Playmaker, which he is referred to most of the time, is without the prefix "Yū", albeit the "Play" part of the alias, convey the same connotation as the kanji character, 「遊」 which has the meanings, "Play".
It is also worth noting all the protagonists used first person pronoun, "ore" 「俺」 at some point, the vessel Yugi uses "boku" 「僕」 to refer to himself, but the dark counterpart uses "ore" 「俺」, then Yuya regularly uses "ore" 「俺」but switches to "watashi" 「私」 when saying his performing phrases. This "ore" 「俺」tradition has however been broke with Yuga uses "boku" 「僕」 instead.
Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists can be placed in two types of personality paradigms, namely the "serious" ones, Yūgi, the later Jūdai, Yūsei and Yūsaku belong to this one, and the "insouciant" ones, the earlier Jūdai, Yūma, Yūya and Yūga as well.
The "insouciant" protagonists have their exclusive catchphrases that they repeat regularly, such as Jūdai's "Gotcha" 「 ガッチャ」, Yūma's "Kattobingu"「かっとビング」, Yūya's "Ladies and gentlemen" 「レディース・アンド・ジェントルメン」and "O tanoshimi wa korekarada/Enjoy it now"「お楽しみはこれからだ」. Whereas the "serious" protagonists have more communal catchphrases such as Yūgi's "Ore no Turn/My Turn"「俺のターン」, Yūsei's "Riding Duel, Acceleration"「ライディング・デュエル、アクセラレーション」 and Yūsaku's "Into the Vrains" 「イントゥ・ザ・ヴレインズ」.
The protagonists all have their positive personality traits, the vessel Yūgi is known for his kindness, while the dark counterpart is purposeful, confident and intelligent, Jūdai is funny, optimistic and confident, Yūsei is altruistic, sensible and intelligent, Yūma is funny, sincere and persistent, Yūya is funny, cheerful and exertive, and Yūsaku is individualistic, confident and intelligent. The one common traits of all protagonists is that they all are righteous in their own definition, in their deeds, while upholding what it meant to be a true duelist.
In addition to the personalities, there are also noticeable paradigms in the appearances of Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists.
First and foremost, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists all have outlandish hairstyles, mostly multicolored. The protagonists have been trying to outdo each other with their outlandish hairstyles.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! hairdo legacy lives on in its several successor series. In most case, the protagonist will have the most conspicuous hair among all the others.
With Yūgi still stays relevant to be one of the most egregious example, after Yūma and Yūsaku.
Jūdai is the only notable deviation, with tolerably ordinary two-tone brown.
Interestingly, the fandom associates the Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists with aquatic lives based on the hairstyles, Yūgi to starfish, Judai to jellyfish, Yūsei to crab, Yūma to shrimp and Yūya to sea anemone for uniformity, instead of tomato, Yūsaku to lobster, and Yūga to squid.
For the patterns of other parts of the character designs, not noticed by many, is that the head designs of the protagonists tends to be expansive. If one are to draw a circle by using any protruding point of the head of any protagonist, including the hair, it can be discerned that the circle will always ended up as a large circle and a large portion of the circle will be occupied by the head, making the impression that the protagonists have big heads.
Furthermore, for the face shapes, the protagonists mostly have rather round face shapes, compared to their rivals who always have oval or oblong face shapes. With the exception of Yūsaku who has slimmer and longer face shape.
Whereas the face sizes of the protagonists are all distinctive based on their physique proportion, short stature in Yūgi's case, and ages in Yūma's, Yuya's and Yūga's cases, making these protagonists have bigger face sizes.
Further to the facial features, all protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh! have big and bright eyes, which have always been without the double eyelids, a double eyelid is the presence of a supratarsal eyelid crease, until the appearance of Yūya who spots creases over his eyes.
This is due to the fact that Yūya's character design is not done by Kazuki Takahashi-sensei but by Naohito Miyoshi-san. The creases continued to be a contemporary characteristic of the succeeding protagonists, Yūsaku and Yūga.
Aside the eyes, other facial features like the nose and mouth follow the common conventional anime character design iconography.
Most of the protagonists have different-sized but similar pointy noses portrayed by straight lines and slender wedge shapes, with the exception of Yūga due to art style change, his nose is almost simplified to nothingness.
Whereas their mouths are usually small when without any expressions, depicted by a short, thin but uneven smooth line, until the appearance of Yūma who seemingly has wider mouth. The wider mouth continued to be a contemporary characteristic of the succeeding protagonists, Yūya, Yūsaku and Yūga. Depending to the illustrators, sometimes their lips are more well-defined.
Most Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists have fine skin texture. With the exception of Yūsei who has been through a lot physically, got his skin damaged in the process, more so when compared to the others.
Whereas for the skin tone, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists spot varying skin tones, Yūgi is with fair skin tone, whereas Jūdai is with fairly fair skin, Yūsei is with tan skin, Yūma is with light tan skin, and then Yūya is back with fair skin, Yūsaku is with fair skin, and Yūga is with fairly fair skin.
For the body, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists are usually with slender figure, but there are protagonists with pretty muscular builds such as Yami Yūgi, the later Jūdai, and Yūsei.
On top of that, the protagonists are always with short or at most average statures, more so when compared with their rivals, as in Yūgi to Kaiba Seto, Jūdai to Marufuji Ryō, Yūsei to Jack Atlas, Yūma to Tenjō Kaito, Yūya to Akaba Reiji, Yūsaku to Kōgami Ryōken, Yūga to Kamijō Tatsuhisa, and there are cases where the protagonists are shorter than the protagonesses, Yūgi was way shorter than Anzu, take no account of the illusional height due to his illustrious hair, and the earlier Jūdai was shorter than Asuka a bit, same for Yūya to Yuzu. However, there are cases where the protagonists are taller than the protagonesses, such as Yūsei is taller than Aki, likewise for Yūma to Kotori, and Yūsaku to Aoi.
In the aspect of outfits, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists are all stylish to an extent, thanks to the sophisticated sense of fashion of their character designers.
The protagonists have been distinctive for their choices of clothing, if not for their colors of clothing.
Usually, the outfits of the preceding protagonist are inclined to be inspired by the predecessors, for instances, Yūya's is based on Yūgi's, Yūsei's is embellished equivalent of Jūdai's, but to stand out and avoid complete clothing clash with the preceding protagonists, they have different colors of clothing instead. Every once in a while, newfangled fashions like those of Yūma and Yūga still come about as novelty.
As for the pattern, so far, for their regular attires, all the protagonists wear outerwears, usually collared jackets, as in Yūgi, the later Jūdai and Yūsei, their jackets are with rather long side slits which always fold up and flare out.
The jackets are usually of school uniforms which most of the time worn in distinguishing ways, for example, Yūgi usually wear his Domino High School jacket unbuttoned and occasionally wear it over his shoulders like a cape, and the earlier Jūdai wear Osiris Red jacket unbuttoned, and the later Jūdai wear a longer variant of Osiris Red jacket that flares out more.
Also, the subsequent protagonists take on the outerwear trend, similarly, collared jacket in Yūsei's case, hooded vest in Yūma's case, Maiami Second Junior High School jacket in Yūya's case which he wears it as a cape in the similar style as Yūgi, Den City High School jacket in Yūsaku's case, and hooded jacket in Yūga's case.
For the innerwear, the shirts worn underneath by the protagonists are usually sleeveless, except for Jūdai which has long sleeves shirt, and Yūya which has short sleeves shirt.
For the lowerwear, the protagonists have all been wearing trousers, until the appearance of Yūga, who being the first to sport shorts instead. The protagonists usually wear slim-fit trousers, but there are variants of trousers such as bell-bottoms worn by Yūma, and baggy pants worn by Yūya.
Aside the clothings, the protagonists sport accessories like goggles, pendants, chokers, pads, bands, gloves, belts, shoes, boots, and so on.
Pendants are recurrent features of Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists inspired by the original series, which serves as the plot devices of the particular series. Yūgi wears a millennium pendant, Sennen Puzzle, Yūma wears a key pendant, Ou no Kagi, as then, Yūya wears a pendulum pendant, Tamashii no Pendulum. Jūdai also wore a amulet pendant, a Yami no Item, only during the Seven Star Arc. Something noteworthy is that all Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists have their own form of plot devices, they may not be in the form of objects, for instances, in Yūsei's case, he has the Dragon Head birthmark of the Akakiryuu no Aza instead, and in Yūsaku's case, he has Ai, the Yami no Ignis, an artificial intelligence with free will. Aside from these, needless to say, the Duel Monsters cards used by the protagonists have always been the plot device of Yu-Gi-Oh! unequivocally.
In spite of similarities and distinctive differences, all the protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh! have a variety of visual appeals.
In the end, it's time for disclosing one of the iDuelist's Dream.
After SEVENS, and after then, hopefully there will have a protagonist named "Yūme" 「遊目」, phonetic "Yūme" 「ゆうめ」 sounds alike to "dream" 「夢」 in Japanese. It is such a coincidence that "dream" 「夢」 also starts with the phonetic, "Yu" 「ゆ」 although without the prolonged "u" 「う」sound .
It is one of the iDuelist's Dreams that a Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonist with this name that derived of dream won't be only a dream.
