Following the Yu-Gi-Oh! Protagonist 遊☆戯☆王 プロタゴニスト, I post an article that features the female leads, the protagonesses of all the seven series together, 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), in which I will discuss about the characteristics, the paradigms of Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses.
Before I proceed to the topic, again, pertaining to the image above, it was made exclusively for this post. Likewise, the protagonesses in the image were all adapted from official sources. Mazaki Anzu was from the Duel Links mobile game, similarly eye colors modified to match those of the anime counterpart, while Tenjōin Asuka, Izayoi Aki, Mizuki Kotori, Hīragi Yuzu were all from the Tag Force video games, whereas Zaizen Aoi and Kirishima Romin 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 protagonesses. Anzu is orange for her brown hair, for brown color is a kind of dark and muted orange color, Asuka is blue for the color of her color of clothing, the Obelisk Blue uniform, Aki is red-magenta for her color of clothing as well, the red-magenta Victorian-styled wardrobe, Kotori is green for her green hair, Yuzu is pink for her pink hair, Aoi is light-blue for that blue color is what associate with her best, with her name having similar sounding as blue color in Japanese, and also her aliases as Blue Angel, Blue Girl and Blue Maiden, lastly, Romin is purple for her purple-magenta hair.
Unlike the protagonists, the protagonesses have irregular patterns in what determine them as a Yu-Gi-Oh! protagoness.
At first, the protagonesses had their names started with the vowel "A" or「あ・ア」, as in Anzu, Asuka, and Aki, but since then Kotori deviated from the naming custom, which left some to view that Kōdzuki Anna as the proper protagoness, Yuzu also distinguished herself with her name, [also being the first protagoness to bear name started with the phonetic "Yu", although it is neither with kanji character, 「遊」nor with or long (doubled) vowel (denoted with a macron over the vowel in rōmaji)], then Aoi came back with the naming custom, and now Romin once again stray away from her predecessors with her given name.
It is noted that all the protagonesses used the same gender neutral first person pronoun, "watashi" 「私」, with the exception of Yuzu who uses a more feminine pronoun, "atashi" 「あたし」.
Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses has always been made to be the love interests of the protagonists, the romantic feelings may be reciprocated ambiguously, and unrequited, with the protagonesses' feelings outweighed the protagonists' feelings, due to the protagonists are usually oblivious, and/or indifferent about romance. This seemingly one-sided romantic setting between the protagonist and protagoness has been a paradigm, until the bland relationship between Yūsaku and Aoi, which did not develop into much of a romantic relationship.
It is a trope in Yu-Gi-Oh! that the protagonesses show jealousy for the protagonists whenever the other female characters approach the protagonists. And the protagonesses often have romantic rivalry with other female characters, contending for the affection of the protagonists, as in Anzu against Rebecca Hopkins for Yūgi, Asuka against Saotome Rei for Jūdai, Aki against Sherry LeBlanc for Yūsei, Kotori against Kōdzuki Anna and Cathy Katherine for Yūma, and Yuzu against Hōchun Mieru for Yūya, with the exception of Aoi again, alone in the competition for Yūsaku, if there is any to it.
While all the Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists are duelists, the protagonesses can be seen in two settings, as a full-fledged duelist, or as a fledgling duelist, more to be a cheerleader character. Asuka, Aki, Yuzu and Aoi belong to the first, as full-fledged duelists whereas Anzu, Kotori and seemingly Romin belong to the latter, as cheerleader characters.
Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses are generally portrayed with the stereotypical femininity, only with different degrees of nurturance, sensitivity, sweetness, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, passivity, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding. It is a paradigm for the protagonesses to be eventually ended up with more feminine positive personalities and behaviors, such as being kind, gentle, sweet and caring, if they were not much, in the beginning.
The damsel in distress trope in Yu-Gi-Oh! has been recurrent to present the protagonesses in archetypal femininity, only to be rescued by the protagonists. All the protagonesses have been depicted as damsels in distress at least once, the nature of distress differs, ranged from the classic being captured, being hold hostages, to being put at stake, but mind-controlled or brainwashed being the one that happened to all the protagonesses, as in Anzu by Marik Ishtar of Ghouls, Asuka by Manjōme Jun of Hikari no Kessha, Aki, sort of, by Divine of Arcadia Movement, Kotori by Girag of Varian, Yuzu by Doktor of Duel Academia, and Aoi/Blue Angel by Specter of Hanoi no Kishi.
While it can be said that the personalities of the protagonesses are cast in the same mold, they still have their own unique personality traits that set them apart. Anzu cherishes camaraderie, caring a lot for the bonds with Yūgi and the gang, as shown in their Peace no Wa/Ring of Peace 「ピースの輪」 and is committed to her dream, working her way to become a professional dancer. Asuka is confident, comprehensibly with her skills and beauty, and clever, being the top Obelisk Blue exemplary student. Aki is solicitous, caring for those close to her whenever possible, and sedulous, which work her way well to be a decent doctor. Kotori is uxorial and faithful, always stay by the side of Yūma, supporting him and managing his needs, such as Duel Meshi/Duel Meals「デュエル飯」, which makes her a virtuous wife-to-be. Yuzu is defensive, tends to stand up for others, protecting those close to her, and she is irascible, easily annoyed by Yūya's antics, and lashed out with her paper fan. Aoi is multifarious, while she is passive in real life, she becomes a different persona, active and uplifting as Blue Angel, reserved as Blue Girl, and refined as Blue Maiden.
Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses has always been made to be somewhat the eye candies of the show, with different ranges of attractiveness, from mediocre to marvelous beauty, Anzu, and Aoi are made to be mediocre, whereas Asuka, Aki, Kotori, Yuzu and Romin are marvelous, with their physical attractiveness arranged in the exact descending name order.
The attractiveness order is based on Asian beauty standards for females, which prioritize features like small face with small delicate jaw, aesthetically oval shaped faces with a defined chin, large eyes with the double eyelids or supratarsal eyelid crease, small straight narrow noses with sharply defined tips, and small full lip with well-defined cupid’s bow, flawless smooth skin with fair skin tone, body shape with moderately large sized breasts, small waist, curvaceous thighs, and a figure with proper proportion of the three.
Likewise, there are also some noticeable paradigms in the appearances of Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses. However, unlike the protagonists, the protagonesses do not have outlandish hairstyles, at most they have tolerably ordinary two-tone hairdos, as in Kotori and Yuzu. All of the protagonesses have strands or locks of hair fringes that fall over their foreheads, with the exception of Aki, who rolls up her front fringes. They all have long hair, ranged from shoulder length to mid back length, adhering to the culture of long hair, a societally structured form of female sexual dimorphism.
For the patterns of other parts of the character designs, the head designs of the protagonesses are rather expansive, due to their luxuriant hairs.
For the face shapes, the protagonesses have rather round and somewhat heart face shapes.
While the protagonesses all have relatively small faces, still the face sizes of the protagonists are all distinctive based on their physique proportion, ages in Kotori's, Yuzu's and Romin's cases, making the impression that these protagonesses have bigger face sizes.
Further to the facial features, all protagonesses of Yu-Gi-Oh! have big and bright eyes, which have always been with the double eyelids, the presence of supratarsal eyelid creases. The double eyelids range from long prominent creases to short ambiguous creases.
Aside the eyes, other facial features like the nose and mouth follow the common conventional anime character design iconography.
Most of the protagonesses have different-sized but similar pointy noses portrayed by straight lines and slender wedge shapes, with the exception of Romin due to art style change, her nose is almost simplified to nothingness.
Whereas their mouths are small, depicted by a short, thin but uneven smooth line. Depending to the illustrators, sometimes their lips are more well-defined.
All Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses have fine skin texture. Whereas for the skin tone, all Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses spot light skin tones, ranged from pale to fair, with varying shades, Anzu is with fair skin tone, whereas Asuka is with pale skin, Aki is with fair skin, Kotori is with fair skin, and then Yuzu is with pale skin, Aoi is with pale skin, and Romin is with fair skin.
For the body, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagoness are all with slender figure, with some of them having fats distributed and deposited pleasantly in the particular areas, specifically the breasts.
The earlier protagonesses are all full-bosomed, Anzu, Asuka, and Aki, with the bust sizes increased in the exact ascending name order. This seemingly patterned characteristic came to an end with the appearance of Kotori who is flat-chested, understandably due to still in her pubescent period. The small bust sizes continued to be a contemporary characteristic of the succeeding protagonists, Yuzu, Aoi and Romin.
The protagonesses are with average statures, when compared with the females of the same age group in the show, but fall short when compared with the males of the same age group, not some of the protagonists though.
There are cases where the protagonesses are taller than the protagonists, Anzu was taller than Yūgi, and Asuka was taller than the earlier Jūdai by a bit, same for Yuzu to Yūya. Still, there are protagonists are taller than the females, such as Yūsei is taller than Aki, likewise for Yūma to Kotori, and Yūsaku to Aoi.
This somewhat play into the sexual dimorphism where females are taller, on average, than males in early adolescence, but males, on average, surpass them in height in later adolescence and adulthood.
In the aspect of outfits, Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonesses are all stylish to an extent, thanks to the sophisticated sense of fashion of their character designers.
The cheerleader protagonesses have extensive wardrobe, they do not stick to any usual casual outfit and wears several throughout the series, namely, Anzu, and Kotori. Whereas the duelist protagonesses tend to stick to the same outfits during most of their onscreen, namely, Asuka, Aki, and Aoi, although they did change into other outfits occasionally, corresponding to casual situation, for instances, for home, for outing, for riding, as in and formal situations, for instances, for school, for party. Yuzu is an unique case that throughout the series, she receives several changes of clothes for each season or different stages, or more to be different dimensions that she was in.
The protagonesses usually conform to the proper ways of wearing, particularly the school uniforms, as in Anzu, and Asuka, Aki and Kotori, who wear their uniforms the same ways like anyone else, with the exception of Yuzu who does not wear the jacket and notably accessorized with a green musical note collar clip, while Aoi wears her uniform properly albeit accessorized with a pink heart-shaped tie clip.
Typically, especially these days, female outfits are designed to be more sexual than male outfits, which accentuate or expose the female body for the fact that the curvaceous feminine body shape associated with nature, nurturing, and reproduction is attractive.
Nevertheless, the protagonesses are not scantily clad, many of them have themselves covered up well, with the exception with Aki, who shows off more of her skin, her glamorous bust, cleavage and curves.
Nonetheless, the rest of the protagonesses do not dress exactly modestly, referencing to their representative upperwears, usually skin-tight fitting, sleeveless or short-sleeved shirts as in Asuka, Kotori, Yuzu and Romin, revealing their slender shoulders and slim arms, also smooth armpits occasionally, although some wear shirts with jackets and/or jumpers, as in Anzu, and Aoi, which covered themselves up well.
Usually layered outfits like these make one look boxy and less feminine, as in Anzu and Aoi, but this is sort out with their miniskirts, which it is a common consensus among all protagonesses to clad in micro-miniskirts, revealing their lean legs below their mid-thigh. Skirt, especially miniskirt can add sufficient volume to the hips and make the protagonesses look endearing and engrossing.
Aside that, neckties with ribbon knot and long knot are recurrent stylish fashion can be seen in the usual outfits of the protagonesses, such as Anzu, Kotori, Yuzu and Aoi. Hosiery, ranged from full tights, thigh-high to knee-high are also common for the protagonesses, with the exception of Asuka who does not seem to wear socks.
Aside the clothings, some of the protagonesses sport accessories like pendants, chokers, bracelets, gloves, belts, high-heeled pumps, shoes, boots, and so on. With Yuzu being the first protagonesses to be accessorized with an item, specifically a bracelet, which serves as the plot devices of the ARC-V series.
In spite of similarities and distinctive differences, all the protagonesses 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 protagoness named "Yūme" 「夢」, which can be a florid and flowery name for females.
It is one of the iDuelist's Dreams that a Yu-Gi-Oh! protagoness with this name that derived of dream won't be only a dream.
