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[ESSAY] Dark Bakura in Aather
Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Card Games, in convenient fake FAQ format.
So I hear you're playing Dark Bakura in an amnesia game, how's that working out for you?
CRY. I mean, uh.
The trouble with Yu-Gi-Oh! as a canon is that it's, well, not a single, coherent canon. The manga, the anime, and the dub anime (not to mention TAS, which is pretty much a version of canon in its own right at this point) all handle important events and character motivations very differently. For fans, this can lead to pretty heavy confusion over… pretty much everything, actually! It doesn't help that Dark Bakura is one of the most important characters plotwise and yet receives what is possibly the least definitive answers about things as simple as who he is.
Because of all this, I feel like I should basically sit down and explain the assumptions I'm making in my play of him and the reasoning behind them. Just so people know where I'm coming from!
Manga canon?
You should read it; it's more coherent and people get set on fire. To briefly summarize the differences with an emphasis on the Bakuras:
▸ There isn't a "favorite card" duel. Since the Duel Kingdom arc continues on from the first storylines without a break in the manga, the Bakuras don't have to be reintroduced and the Monster World game doesn't have to be remixed.
▸ Bakura Ryou puts on the Millennium Ring willingly at least twice, and is pretty damn happy about doing it the second time (after Battle City, when he actually steals it back from Yuugi and comments that Yuugi's mean for hiding it from him). He also built the final TRPG. Basically, the relationship between the Bakuras is more complicated in the manga.
▸ Ancient Egyptian Laser Beams, to borrow a phrase, never enter into it. Dark Bakura kills Pegasus to get the Millennium Eye, and the beginning of his partnership with Malik is more of a verbal dickwaving contest until Malik tells him he's got five minutes to decide whether or not he wants to work together or be destroyed.
▸ Dark Bakura gives the Millennium Eye to Yuugi, not Kaiba. The whole Mokuba kidnapping/luring to Egypt thing never happens in the manga. Also, the Memory World game takes place in the Domino Museum, not Egypt.
Okay, so who is Dark Bakura, anyway?
Hahaha that's a funny question. Which is to say that canon never tells us. Or, rather, it tells us a number of different things that are difficult to piece together. On the one hand, during the Memory World game, the Parasite Mind fragment of the Ring Spirit comes right out and informs Yuugi & co. that he's a fragment of Zorc's soul:
▸"三千年前ゾーク・ネクロファデスはこの千年輪に魂の一部を封印していた... としたら ククク..."
(What if three thousand years ago… Zorc Necrophades sealed part of his soul into this Millennium Ring... Hahaha...)
▸そう... オレ様の正体もまたゾーク・ネクロファデス...
(Right... my true identity is also Zorc Necrophades...)
Which would be pretty straightforward if it weren't for the Thief King, who:
1) shares the name "Bakura" (in katakana, the same as the ring spirit)
2) has nearly the same motivations (the only difference is the emphasis on Kul Elna)
3) has a very a similar personality (in the manga, unlike the anime, the Thief King has a distinct personality from Dark Bakura -- he's not a vessel for Dark Bakura's consciousness in the game, though he is one of the NPCs in Dark Bakura's deck)
4) has nearly identical speech patterns (as opposed to Akhenaden!Zorc and Zorc proper, who both speak very differently)
Keep in mind that when the spirit of the Ring first introduces himself to Bakura Ryou, it's as a thief:
▸千年アイテムとは時を超えて古の心を宿すことのできる墓標... だがよぉ... 墓を守る番人もいれば... 墓を暴く盗賊もいるってことだ... クククク...
(The Millennium Items are gravemarkers passed through time that have the ability to carry ancient souls... but, you know... if there are guards who protect those tombs... there are also thieves who open those graves... Hahahaha...)
Also, the Parasite Mind fragment of the Ring Spirit who says the line about being Zorc also says this later in the same arc:
▸リングに宿る盗賊の魂がそう言ってる...
(That's what the spirit of the thief inhabiting the Ring says...)
Which would seem to confirm that the Thief King is in fact part of what's inside the Ring.
It's one of the great recurring arguments of the fandom (English and Japanese) whether Dark Bakura is either: 1) purely a fragment of Zorc, or 2) a mixture between the Thief King and that Zorc fragment. I am playing him as the latter! I personally think it makes the most sense and is also more interesting. Especially for an amnesia game, since the order he gets back his memories in will affect how he views the different parts of himself.
Speaking of memories: what about the Memory World game?
BAKURA: Actually, we're both called Bakura.
YAMI: What? But that's just confusing! Not to mention highly unlikely.
BAKURA: Oh, just wait until Season 5 when there's three of me running around! Even the fans have trouble keeping up with that one.
--YGO TAS, Episode 40: Final Deathtination
I've more or less divided the events of the Memory World game into three separate parts, one for each Bakura, and I can't believe I even said that. There's the Bakura in the real world, who's DMing the game. Then there's the Parasite Mind fragment of Bakura who's inside the game itself. And finally there's the Thief King, who, as mentioned before, is pretty much an NPC. Because he's an NPC, he's not contributing anything to the registry. In their place are the Thief King's real experiences in Ancient Egypt that the game touches on but doesn't exactly match up with (in the real world, there was no time rewinding because Yuugi wasn't there to make it necessary, for example). So things from the Memory World are labled in the registry as "DM," "Memory World," or "real world version" depending on which facet of Bakura is remembering it.
I hope that was as confusing for you as it was for me.
What if I have a real question and not just a hypothetical one posed by you in order to have a convenient format with which to respond to various issues?
THEN ASK IT. No, seriously, go ahead, I'll do my best to answer.
So I hear you're playing Dark Bakura in an amnesia game, how's that working out for you?
CRY. I mean, uh.
The trouble with Yu-Gi-Oh! as a canon is that it's, well, not a single, coherent canon. The manga, the anime, and the dub anime (not to mention TAS, which is pretty much a version of canon in its own right at this point) all handle important events and character motivations very differently. For fans, this can lead to pretty heavy confusion over… pretty much everything, actually! It doesn't help that Dark Bakura is one of the most important characters plotwise and yet receives what is possibly the least definitive answers about things as simple as who he is.
Because of all this, I feel like I should basically sit down and explain the assumptions I'm making in my play of him and the reasoning behind them. Just so people know where I'm coming from!
Manga canon?
You should read it; it's more coherent and people get set on fire. To briefly summarize the differences with an emphasis on the Bakuras:
▸ There isn't a "favorite card" duel. Since the Duel Kingdom arc continues on from the first storylines without a break in the manga, the Bakuras don't have to be reintroduced and the Monster World game doesn't have to be remixed.
▸ Bakura Ryou puts on the Millennium Ring willingly at least twice, and is pretty damn happy about doing it the second time (after Battle City, when he actually steals it back from Yuugi and comments that Yuugi's mean for hiding it from him). He also built the final TRPG. Basically, the relationship between the Bakuras is more complicated in the manga.
▸ Ancient Egyptian Laser Beams, to borrow a phrase, never enter into it. Dark Bakura kills Pegasus to get the Millennium Eye, and the beginning of his partnership with Malik is more of a verbal dickwaving contest until Malik tells him he's got five minutes to decide whether or not he wants to work together or be destroyed.
▸ Dark Bakura gives the Millennium Eye to Yuugi, not Kaiba. The whole Mokuba kidnapping/luring to Egypt thing never happens in the manga. Also, the Memory World game takes place in the Domino Museum, not Egypt.
Okay, so who is Dark Bakura, anyway?
Hahaha that's a funny question. Which is to say that canon never tells us. Or, rather, it tells us a number of different things that are difficult to piece together. On the one hand, during the Memory World game, the Parasite Mind fragment of the Ring Spirit comes right out and informs Yuugi & co. that he's a fragment of Zorc's soul:
▸"三千年前ゾーク・ネクロファデスはこの千年輪に魂の一部を封印していた... としたら ククク..."
(What if three thousand years ago… Zorc Necrophades sealed part of his soul into this Millennium Ring... Hahaha...)
▸そう... オレ様の正体もまたゾーク・ネクロファデス...
(Right... my true identity is also Zorc Necrophades...)
Which would be pretty straightforward if it weren't for the Thief King, who:
1) shares the name "Bakura" (in katakana, the same as the ring spirit)
2) has nearly the same motivations (the only difference is the emphasis on Kul Elna)
3) has a very a similar personality (in the manga, unlike the anime, the Thief King has a distinct personality from Dark Bakura -- he's not a vessel for Dark Bakura's consciousness in the game, though he is one of the NPCs in Dark Bakura's deck)
4) has nearly identical speech patterns (as opposed to Akhenaden!Zorc and Zorc proper, who both speak very differently)
Keep in mind that when the spirit of the Ring first introduces himself to Bakura Ryou, it's as a thief:
▸千年アイテムとは時を超えて古の心を宿すことのできる墓標... だがよぉ... 墓を守る番人もいれば... 墓を暴く盗賊もいるってことだ... クククク...
(The Millennium Items are gravemarkers passed through time that have the ability to carry ancient souls... but, you know... if there are guards who protect those tombs... there are also thieves who open those graves... Hahahaha...)
Also, the Parasite Mind fragment of the Ring Spirit who says the line about being Zorc also says this later in the same arc:
▸リングに宿る盗賊の魂がそう言ってる...
(That's what the spirit of the thief inhabiting the Ring says...)
Which would seem to confirm that the Thief King is in fact part of what's inside the Ring.
It's one of the great recurring arguments of the fandom (English and Japanese) whether Dark Bakura is either: 1) purely a fragment of Zorc, or 2) a mixture between the Thief King and that Zorc fragment. I am playing him as the latter! I personally think it makes the most sense and is also more interesting. Especially for an amnesia game, since the order he gets back his memories in will affect how he views the different parts of himself.
Speaking of memories: what about the Memory World game?
BAKURA: Actually, we're both called Bakura.
YAMI: What? But that's just confusing! Not to mention highly unlikely.
BAKURA: Oh, just wait until Season 5 when there's three of me running around! Even the fans have trouble keeping up with that one.
--YGO TAS, Episode 40: Final Deathtination
I've more or less divided the events of the Memory World game into three separate parts, one for each Bakura, and I can't believe I even said that. There's the Bakura in the real world, who's DMing the game. Then there's the Parasite Mind fragment of Bakura who's inside the game itself. And finally there's the Thief King, who, as mentioned before, is pretty much an NPC. Because he's an NPC, he's not contributing anything to the registry. In their place are the Thief King's real experiences in Ancient Egypt that the game touches on but doesn't exactly match up with (in the real world, there was no time rewinding because Yuugi wasn't there to make it necessary, for example). So things from the Memory World are labled in the registry as "DM," "Memory World," or "real world version" depending on which facet of Bakura is remembering it.
I hope that was as confusing for you as it was for me.
What if I have a real question and not just a hypothetical one posed by you in order to have a convenient format with which to respond to various issues?
THEN ASK IT. No, seriously, go ahead, I'll do my best to answer.