The Evolution of Rivals in Yugioh
Introduction:
Seto Kaiba and Yugi Muto had a fascinating dynamic in Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh manga. It’s the clash between the disadvantaged underdog and the natural prodigy that we’ve seen time and time again with characters like Goku and Vegeta, Naruto and Sasuke, Midoriya and Bakugou, etc.
Much like those rivalries I just mentioned, the Kaiba and Yugi rivalry makes Yu-Gi-Oh into the story that we know today. Kaiba and Yugi change dramatically in the pages of Yu-Gi-Oh, with Kaiba losing his sadism and having to recognize Atem and Yugi as two different people; while Yugi gains more confidence; yet in spite of all their development and personal changes, they never lose sight of the other. The Kaiba-Yugi rivalry is present, a universal constant in a sea of change.
Being that Kaiba was the breakout character of the original series, the writers knew that with each successive spin-off they had to capture his energy and that dynamic in some way. And so began the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise’s most important precedent: in each series, there will be a colder, talented and cynical rival to contrast with our optimistic underdog hero. New rivals built on the ideas of old rivals, subverting some of their tropes and keeping others the same.
In this essay, I will go through every Yu-Gi-Oh rivalry and explain how they differ, how they built on the trends of Seto Kaiba, and how a major part of Yugioh’s identity (as a franchise) owes its existence to these fascinating, complex figures.
Duel Monsters: The Original Rival:
Seto Kaiba is the classic Yugioh rival. In the original series, besides being a challenging rival, Seto has a few main roles:
A deuteragonist and catalyst in the narrative
A protective older brother
A narcissistic prodigy
The teenage CEO of a wealthy, world-changing mega-corporation
And an obsessive denier of the supernatural
That last one is particularly important, because iIn an ever-changing, increasingly bizarre world of magic and monsters, Kaiba’s skepticism of the supernatural becomes less and less rational, even outright comical. When juxtaposed with Yugi’s inherently supernatural life, Kaiba seems more logical, factual and unwilling to take assumptions at face value. Kaiba is the Scully to Yugi’s Mulder, the cold skeptic to Yugi’s passionate believer.
But Kaiba’s obsessive denial of the supernatural also pushes him to develop new technologies, leading to Duel Monsters going from just a pop cultural phenomenon to an intrinsic part of life in Yugioh’s setting. Yugioh, as we know it, wouldn’t exist without the machinations of Seto Kaiba. This is one example of how Kaiba is the catalyst for the whole series.
Sure, he isn’t the one who trapped Grandpa Muto in a TV or completed the Millennium Puzzle, but he's Yugi’s first real challenge of the story. Hell, in the Duel Monsters anime they made this duel the first episode of the entire show to hammer home one central message: there would be no Yugioh without Seto Kaiba.
Sometimes he’ll briefly jump ahead of Yugi in skill or power, such as when he acquired Obelisk in Battle City. In these moments, he represents a power ceiling for Yugi to catch up to. But most of the time, he’s a bitter rival to Yugi, one step behind and never quite able to catch up. He considers himself the best of the best, so getting beaten by some nerdy, wimpy kid with a third-rate deck destroys his world view. Throughout all of Yugioh, Kaiba is desperately trying to acquire more power to crush Yugi and correct this distortion of his world view. (A common theme in almost all protagonists moving forward.)
Of course, this is complicated by his slow realization that Atem and Yugi are two different people, and the one he’s been dueling isn’t actually Yugi. (Again, a theme we’ll see a few more times down the road.) Once he redirects his attention solely to Atem, it creates an interesting clash between Atem’s mysticism and Seto’s technology.
This dynamic reaches its ultimate end in Dark Side of Dimensions, when Kaiba rips a hole to the afterlife itself with his technology to get one final duel. This is the culmination of his character arc in two ways:
After so many years of denying the existence of the supernatural, he finally accepts it, but only to the extent he can challenge the supernatural with his technology.
His obsession with Atem has literally taken him out of the mortal realm entirely, and it’s unclear if he can ever go back.
All in all, it’s not hard to see why Kaiba was the breakout character of Takahashi’s original series. He’s charismatic and powerful, engineered to contrast with our equally-likable main character, but he’s also filled with hidden depths and emotions. His arc is wrapped up in Yugi’s without being overshadowed by him. It’s telling that, when Takahashi was brought back to write Dark Side of Dimensions and give some final closure to the story, he more or less made Kaiba the protagonist of the story.
GX: The Two Halves of Kaiba:
In GX, the characteristics of Seto Kaiba have been more-or-less split into two rivals: Zane Truesdale and Chazz Princeton.
Chazz is a talented duelist whose talents give him a big ego; him being beaten by our even more talented underdog protagonist messes with his world view, and Chazz seeks to correct it by defeating Jaden in retaliation.
Zane is the protective but aloof older brother: stone cold, calculating and realistic, but with a hidden emotional side.
I’ll start by talking about Zane. Zane acts as a rival, sure, but only in a loose, non-traditional sense. There’s no animosity between him and Jaden; but more than that, Jaden can’t push Zane to grow as much as Zane pushes him. Zane is more of a goal, a high power ceiling that Jaden needs to get to, which makes the whole thing rather one-sided. Hell, he’s closer to a mentor figure than a rival at times.
The one-sided nature of their dynamic (where Zane challenges Jaden but not the other way around) makes Zane feel like a flat character arc in the first season; he exists as a living obstacle, never his own person. While he has a certain presence on screen, he never flips the whole script in the way that Kaiba effortlessly could. Later seasons rectified this by taking his relationship with Syrus through many twists and turns, as well as giving Zane more characters like Aster and Jesse to bounce off of.
In the end, the most Jaden ever manages to do in the series is tie with him, and they never really get a proper rematch after that. It’s a shame, really, because as soon as Jaden equaled Zane, he graduated from Duel Academy and left for the Pro Circuits, and the two were propelled on different life paths. Few people can say they’ve honestly beaten Jaden Yuki in a match, and Zane is one of those rare existences.
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Chazz is almost universally considered the “true” rival of GX, in that he and Jaden push each other time and time again. He is an adamant denier of the supernatural, even though he and Jaden are both connected by the same supernatural forces, which seems like an obvious (and successful) attempt to recreate the comedic juxtaposition between Kaiba and Yugi of the original series.
Chazz has one thing that most rivals of Yugioh don’t have: versatility. Chazz has an incredible willingness to change up everything about himself on the fly on the off-chance it lets him beat Jaden. He starts off with a DARK Fiend-type deck, then an Armored Dragon deck, then a VWXYZ deck, then an OTK Ojama deck, then a Beetron deck, and towards the end of the show he’s using a bizarre VWXYZ-Armored Dragon-Ojama hybrid deck that really shouldn’t work but somehow does.
In these episodes, Chazz is harnessing that same wild, manic energy that made Seto so likable: the single-minded goal of winning, no matter how much he has to alter everything about himself. Whereas Zane is a flat, static character, only changing after he’s broken away from the main setting; Chazz is a dynamic presence, always in flux, always moving around. He doesn’t necessarily command respect and gravitas wherever he goes, but he manages to be the source of attention (both for viewers and other characters alike) because he’s such a brilliant source of comedy.
This also leads to something about him and Jaden that Seto and Yugi never had. Yugi never really considered Kaiba a friend, and if he did, it was only ever in the loosest sense. One thing that makes Jaden and Chazz’s relationship really, really fucking funny is the fact that Jaden genuinely, honest-to-god thinks of them as best friends. It seemed to set a trend in other spin-offs of more genuine camaraderie and warmth between the main protagonist and their chief rival.
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When looking at the roles Chazz and Zane fill in the story, neither of them live up to Seto Kaiba’s multifaceted character. Take a look at that criterion I outlined earlier: Seto is a deuteragonist, a challenging rival, an older brother, a narcissistic prodigy, a CEO, and a denier of the supernatural.
Now, neither of them need to be a CEO because, well, Kaiba obviously exists in this universe, and his advancements in science and dueling are still recent enough to be affecting the world.
Chazz is a denier of the supernatural, a narcissistic prodigy and (I would argue) the deuteragonist of the story. At least, in Seasons 1, 2 and 4. In Season 3, Jesse more or less fulfills the deuteragonist role and Chazz is side-lined, but he’s back to being relevant again in the final Season. The manga (which is about as different as an adaptation can get) really hammers home his deuteragonist role, giving him plenty of screen time throughout the story and even having him team up with Jaden in the final battle against Traegodia.
However, while I just explained how Chazz is more or less the “true” rival of GX, I also have a hard time arguing that Chazz meaningfully challenges Jaden in the same way that Jaden challenges him. The fact of the matter is that Jaden is on another level entirely, particularly after the first season. Luckily that’s where Zane comes in, giving Jaden the challenge he craves and serving as a protective older brother to Syrus. The problem, of course, is that Zane fulfills none of the other roles.
Chazz and Zane are the two halves of Seto Kaiba. The GX writing team didn’t want to directly copy Kaiba’s role in the story, so they made the smart move to delegate much of Kaiba’s individual, smaller roles to two separate characters. Unburdened by the need to create a carbon copy of Seto Kaiba, this let the team develop two wildly different personas: Zane as a smart, calm senior student who never loses his cool; and Chazz as a boisterous, loud and rambunctious source of comedy.
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GX also introduced a third rival character in Aster Phoenix. He’s not a rival in the sense that he’s a fierce competitor who’s a step behind, nor is he necessarily a far-off ceiling to strive towards. Rather, he’s a dark mirror, Jaden’s biggest strengths reflected back against him. Yugioh rarely uses mirror matches as a plot device, and almost never as long as Aster used Elemental Heroes, so he really stands out in retrospect as a unique existence in the franchise.
Both Jaden and Aster started from the same point, Elemental Heroes, but both times they have to refine their decks. Aster goes back to his roots and honors his father by embracing Destiny Heroes, whereas Jaden improves his deck by adding Neo-Spacians. In the end, both parties beat each other once, and Aster stands out as yet another character who beat Jaden Yuki in a duel.
I’d almost compare the way GX handles Shonen rivalry to My Hero Academia. Both series are ultra-competitive school settings where the main character attracts multiple rivals of contrasting personalities, and these rivals end up growing through their fights with each other. It’s really quite clever, and it makes the cast feel more real, all while reminding us that the whole world doesn’t revolve around Jaden.
5Ds: The Broken Man:
5Ds is much more straightforward to analyze, with Jack Atlas as the only character that can reasonably be called a rival to Yusei. However, Jack is also one of the franchise’s best, most well-constructed characters, so there’s certainly a lot going on.
After the hilarious duo of Chazz and Jaden, Jack’s character was yet another experiment from the writing team to see if they could sell us on having the rival and protagonist be best friends. The end result is a character who feels even more like a deuteragonist (if not an outright protagonist in his own right) than the previous ones in the franchise, while still being a worthy rival, all while owing comparatively little about his existence to Seto Kaiba.
Let me explain. Jack is a loudmouthed hothead, a brawler, and something of a delinquent who only recently rose to fame. He’s chivalrous, emotional, honorable to a fault, has a strict moral compass, is eager to fight evil and he’s protective of all children (not just one particular younger sibling). These are all traditionally heroic traits in Shonen stories, something the writers highlighted by comparing him to the actual hero, Yusei, a non-traditional Shonen protagonist who’s quiet, stoic, calm and who rarely laughs. Yet, one would never mistake Jack for being the true hero of the show because in the first arc, all of his noble traits are drowned out by his pride, his manipulativeness, his ambition and his hunger for the spotlight, which are more standard for rivals.
This creates a dichotomy in Jack Atlas: the passionate, hot-blooded and heroic ex-criminal from Satellite, and the prideful, condescending Master of Faster in New Domino.
What’s interesting isn’t how distinct these two personas are; it’s how similar they are. Even from his days in the Satellite, Jack was a man of big dreams and big ambitions. The problem is that to fulfill those dreams with the limited resources afforded to him, he had to give up everything. When he finally gets to the top, he’s haunted by what he gave up to get there, and he finds himself longing for the simplicity of his days as an Enforcer.
Jack’s story in Season 1 is crucial to Yugioh 5Ds’ themes about classism, conformity and social connections. The narrative presents the notion that climbing the social ladder means abandoning those closest to you; but it also emphasizes that our sense of self is shaped by the people we spend time with. Combining these two concepts, we get the argument that climbing the social ladder isn’t worth it because it means abandoning who you are. That’s what Jack struggles with, and it’s why he feels like two different people: he had to essentially abandon everything about his old identity to get to where he is.
Instead of climbing to the top of society, it’s better for us to abolish the corrupt system so we can all live better and more authentically, which is what happens at the end of Season 1.
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Jack’s character arc is fundamentally different from that of other rivals, for two reasons:
Reason 1: Most of the time, the rival is a cold lone wolf who’s been isolated his whole life, but has some kind of emotional bedrock. (Mukoba for Kaiba, Hart for Kite and Syrus for Zane.) Slowly, this character opens up to the protagonist and begrudgingly becomes their friend. Jack’s character arc isn’t about going outside his comfort zone and gaining new social connections, but rekindling old ones. He’s not a cold, cruel loner, he’s actually a big softie who’s deluding himself into thinking he’s a loner, because society has taught him that being ruthless is how you get ahead and become happy. In his desire to prove he was something he wasn’t, he pushed away everyone close to him, leaving him without emotional support.
Reason 2: Unlike other rivals, he’s already accomplished his goals when the story begins. Most of the time, the rival’s goal is to save their little brother, defeat the main protagonist, defeat a larger antagonist, or some mixture of the two. Jack doesn’t know that Rex Goodwin is a villain, and he’s already defeated the main protagonist (the only family he had) to get to where he is.
Jack’s story in Season 1 is about looking for a reason to live. Jack’s destiny is to build a family and defend the innocents, but he thinks his destiny is to be the best of the best, no matter what it costs. Destiny was the major theme of Yugioh 5Ds, so it was thematically brilliant to create a rival with the same fundamental destiny as the main character, but who completely misinterpreted their destiny and thinks they already fulfilled it.
When our story begins, Jack initially is bored, without a clear purpose in life and without anyone to confide in, three problems that are inherently connected. Staring from the end of the Fortune Cup and throughout the Dark Signers arc, he really comes alive: he’s being challenged for the first time in recent memory, he finally has a grander purpose in life, he’s reconciled with his adoptive a family, and he’s fallen in love with a woman who motivates him to be better. tes him to be better than the man he was yesterday.
While he might have some passing similarities, the overall arc that Jack undergoes is completely different from Seto Kaiba, and consequently, he fulfills very different roles. He is a challenging rival, a deuteragonist (and, as I said, he intentionally emulates normal heroic traits to hammer this home), and a narcissistic prodigy. But he grows out of those narcissistic traits early on, he never expresses any long-lasting disbelief in the supernatural, and he’s never any kind of CEO or technological leader. While he does care for children like Leo, Luna and Crow’s kids, it’s never the same dynamic that Kaiba had with Mukoba or Zane had with Syrus.
All in all, this leads to an entirely unique entity. Jack stands out as one of the few rivals who could helm his own show, and it sometimes feels like he already is, simply because he’s a reservoir of character depth and emotion.
ZEXAL: The Bully and the Prodigy:
After 5Ds had a single rival in Jack Atlas, Yugioh once again creates a story with two distinct rivals: Reginald “Shark” Kastle, and Kite Tenjo.
I’ll touch on Kite first. Kite is the most straightforward homage to Seto Kaiba in the entire series (specifically, early Seto Kaiba from the first couple arcs of Yugioh), fulfilling almost all of Kaiba’s roles effortlessly. He is a cruel, prodigious, pious duelist who goes out of his way to attack and harm the main character. He’s noticeably older and more vicious than the main character and he uses advanced technology to achieve his goals and save his younger brother.
If Zane Truesdale and Chazz Princeton were like the two halves of Seto Kaiba, Kite Tenjo is those two halves joined together. The end result is a character that feels very distinct from many of his predecessors, like Zane, Chazz and Jack. He doesn’t have the same friendly banter with Yuma that Jack and Yusei had, he doesn’t have the quiet compassion of Zane, and he doesn’t have the boisterous comedy of Chazz. He’s stone cold, quiet and fiercely independent.
These very Kaiba-esque qualities are most evident in his deck. Every rival has had a Dragon with 3000 ATK as their ace card, but “Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon” is the only one to retain the naming convention established by Blue-Eyes. It immediately displays to the audience that we’re going to watch someone with the same ruthlessness and fierce protectiveness that Kaiba had all those years ago.
I think it’s worth pointing out that unlike other rivals, who just vaguely pay homage to Kaiba as a whole, Kite specifically embodies Kaiba from the Death T and Duelist Kingdom arcs. He’s a microcosm view of the character, a modern interpretation of everything Kaiba was pre-Battle City. Though he’s quite faithful to the source material, this can actually make the two feel very distinct.
For example, ZEXAL places far more emphasis on Kite’s role as a brother because saving Mokuba was Kaiba’s goal during Duelist Kingdom (though this unintentionally reduces Hart to more of a plot device than a character). On the other hand, the only two Kaiba’s character roles that Kite doesn’t fulfill are being a CEO and being a skeptic of the supernatural, because Takahashi wasn’t emphasizing those as much during Duelist Kingdom.
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Now, that’s not to say that Kite is an homage just to Kaiba, no matter how faithful it may be. Kite’s character arc shares two themes with Jack and Zane: guilt and sacrifice.
Like Jack, Kite has misinterpreted his destiny in life. He has grown to hate Number hunters, and he’s built his entire deck around fighting XYZ monsters, because he believes this is what he must do. In actuality, he’s been deceived by his father, and once he learns the truth, he bears immense guilt for the souls he’s stolen, and despite reassurance from his friends, he has no ideas how he’ll live with himself.
But that’s not the only reason why this lie hurts so badly. Much like Zane’s heart condition, Kite’s quest for the Numbers was slowly killing him, to the point that he’s at risk of dying in almost every major confrontation in the series. The lie stings, not just because he has to bear guilt for the innocents he harmed, but because he was shaving years off his life for a meaningless cause.
It’s honestly quite bleak, and a really tragic journey. Even though he embodies a lot of the viciousness of previous rivals, he actually ends up in good standing with the main characters simply because they offer him support and guidance once he realizes the toll of his sacrifice and the error of his ways.
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In the original series, Joey Wheeler and Seto Kaiba were constantly at each other’s throats. To call them “enemies” didn’t quite sell it: in classical literary terms, these two were “foils”. Two former bullies fighting to save their siblings---one an impoverished ex-thug with a heart of gold wielding the “Red-Eyes Black Dragon,” and the other a cold, sadistic prodigy wielding the “Blue-Eyes White Dragon.” It provided a funny dynamic, watching the best friend and rival of our main character have their own rivalry.
And that’s very much the dynamic that Kite Tenjo and Shark Kastle have in ZEXAL. Because, uniquely for the series, Shark is a rival that doesn’t seem to take inspiration from Seto Kaiba in any way. Instead, he’s a faithful homage to Joey Wheeler: a former bully who is forgiven for his crimes, and he and his sister are assimilated into the pure-hearted main character’s friend group. I’ve spoken about this before in “Yu-Gi-Oh is Divided Into Trilogies,” but ZEXAL is a very deliberate, futuristic homage to the original series, so it makes sense that the two main rivals are such deliberate homages to Seto Kaiba and Joey Wheeler.
But Shark isn’t just an homage to Joey, he’s also a deconstruction of his character archetype. Unlike Joey, who’s transition from bully to friend was quick and easily forgiven, Shark’s is slow, rough and, at times, painful to watch. Shark often fights the main characters, either of his own free will or because he’s mind-controlled. In fact, he’s the final villain of the entire series!
Also unlike the original series, ZEXAL doesn’t gloss over Shark’s delinquent past. Joey got into some scraps, sure, but Shark was a cheater who got wrapped up in petty theft on a surprisingly frequent basis. Hell, a big part of Shark’s character arc in the early seasons is trying to rebuild his reputation after it came out that he was a cheater.
Shark and Kite are foils, just as Joey and Kaiba were foils. We still have the dynamic of a younger, hotheaded delinquent fighting against a straight-laced prodigy with a sadistic streak; but there’s more to it than that. Shark is a Number-user whose entire dueling style revolves around steamrolling the opponent with XYZ monsters. Kite is a Number hunter; a tricky, strategic duelist who baits his opponents into summoning XYZ monsters and then eliminating them with his ace. Like Joey and Chazz, Shark changes his deck on multiple occasions, but Kite only evolves and refines his Galaxy-Eyes deck. The two aren’t just foils in backstory, but even down to their dueling styles.
Shark underwent his redemption arc and lost his hostility much earlier than Kite did, but he also turned evil towards the end of the show, whereas Kite remained solely on the side of good after his heel-face turn. This leads to an interesting dynamic, where Shark and Kite are often at odds with each other just as often as they’re at odds with Yuma. In fact, on one notable occasion, they even come to blows because of Yuma, when Shark rises to defend Yuma from Kite in Episode 22; ironic, considering that towards the end of the series, Shark will have abandoned both of them in a villainous transformation.
Arc-V: Leader of the Lancers:
Yet again, we have a Yugioh spinoff with two main rivals, though one is obviously far more competent, well-written and fitting of the mold than the other. Those two rivals are Shingo Sawatari and Reiji Akaba.
Of the two, Reiji is the obvious “real” rival of Arc-V. He’s once again an homage to Kaiba, but he’s different from the other rivals: he doesn’t split Kaiba’s characteristics with another character, nor does he embody the worst parts about him. Reiji’s entire character conception is more optimistic than that. In a nutshell, he’s Kaiba without the undesirable traits.
Whereas Seto is a lone wolf, Reiji is a natural leader, charismatic but unafraid to get his hands dirty. Whereas Seto is short-sighted in his obsession with defeating Yugi; Reiji sees the bigger picture, and he never intentionally seeks conflict, only fighting Yuya to prove a point. Whereas Seto considers Yugi his biggest enemy, Reiji seems to genuinely regard Yuya as a friend (but, more importantly, a comrade).
Reiji’s character conception also makes sense when we look at the bigger picture of Arc-V. Unlike past series with self-contained arcs and arc villains, Arc-V had one long story with a single overwhelmingly powerful villain. To this end, we needed a calmer, patient rival who could lead the cast instead of dividing them, all while making familiar callbacks to Kaiba.
Take a look at the check-list I mentioned earlier and you’ll see what I mean:
Is Reiji a deuteragonist and catalyst in the narrative? Yes
Is he a protective older brother? Yes
Is he the teenage CEO of a wealthy, world-changing mega-corporation? Yes
Is he a challenging rival to Yuya? Yes, but only with the intent of pushing Yuya to do great things
Is he a narcissistic prodigy? No, he’s prodigious but not narcissistic.
Is he an obsessive denier of the supernatural? No. The supernatural and the technological have very little distinction in Arc-V, and this show has no time for that debate anyways because he needs to assemble the Lancers.
Take a look at where Reiji diverges from the mold. The Arc-V writing team created Reiji to fulfill the basic functions of the script, but removed a lot of characteristics used to generate conflict, like having a big ego; all so they could put more emphasis on his leadership skills.
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There’s an interesting dynamic at play with Reiji and his younger adopted sibling, Reira, that we’ve never seen before in the franchise.
Mokuba was written in the original Yugioh manga to give Seto Kaiba an emotional core, as if to tell the audience “See! He isn’t totally heartless!” And like the rival archetype itself, the “younger sibling of the rival” became a fully-fledged character archetype in Yugioh. At its best, the younger sibling is a fleshed-out character with a distinct personality and goal, like Syrus Truesdale, but at its worst, the younger sibling is essentially a plot device disguised as a character, a MacGuffin to make the rival struggle, like with Hart Tenjo.
Reira at first seems like the latter, a plot device with no personality of her own, but the script is flipped in a few ways:
The comparatively minor twist revealing that she is actually a girl
The more intriguing, slowly built-up revelation that Reiji has been molding her into a living weapon, culminating in their duel in the halls of Duel Academy, when he remarks “I’ve created a monster.”
And the final, fucking massive twist that her lack of internal identity allows for Ray Akaba to possess her, thus having Reira be the one to beat series antagonist Zarc.
After spending an entire arc wondering how the hell Zarc would be beaten, having Reira deliver the final blow came out of nowhere, but not in a bad way. After all, it’s the sort of plot twist that messes with fans the most, because we’ve been conditioned to expect younger siblings to be useless. It was a ballsy-as-fuck move, and I genuinely hope we see more like it.
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Just as ZEXAL parallels Duel Monsters, Arc-V parallels GX. With that in mind, it’s fitting that Yuya has a second rival in Shinzo Sawatari.
Sawatari is the Chazz Princeton of the modern age: loud-mouthed, full of energy and over-confident in his abilities because he’s in the upper echelons of a dueling school. Like Chazz, he’s a versatile duelist, switching between a Dart deck, a WATER-attribute Monarch deck, a Yosenju deck and an Abyss Actors deck. And like Chazz, he’s completely overshadowed by the talent of his seniors.
The fundamental difference is that, whereas people always think of Chazz as the main rival of GX, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who holds the same opinion about Sawatari. That’s because, unfortunately, Sawatari lacks a lot of the same charisma that defined Chazz, nor does he have the same comedic potential. He was a fun villain to fight a couple times early on, but he never really had a grander purpose in the narrative.
One idea that Sawatari did experiment with was a rival who intentionally emulated the main character. Over the course of multiple duels, Sawatari not only stole Yuya’s Pendulum Cards, he also adopted his mannerisms of entertaining the crowd, even settling for a Pendulum deck themed around theatre to compliment Yuya’s circus-themed deck. In a series all about smiles and laughter, it creates an interesting juxtaposition between one rival (Sawtari) who tries to entertain everyone, and another rival who’s all work and no fun (Reiji).
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The final character I want to discuss in this section is Shun Kurosaki.
Shun is...well, not a rival to Yuya. But he’s worth discussing because he fulfills more or less the same role as Kite in ZEXAL: a crazy, short-tempered, violent duelist who fights to protect his younger sibling from imminent harm. This similarity to Kite can be seen in their dueling style: Kite uses a Galaxy-Eyes deck that exploits XYZ Summoning, but Shun lives in a setting with multiple Extra Deck methods, so he uses Raidraptors, which have effects to counter all Special Summoning.
I bring up Shun because he represents a new archetype created more-or-less in the shadow of the rival archetype: the extremist. Whereas the rival is competitive and driven towards a surpassing person, an “extremist” character simply wants to crush all their enemies, so they try to adopt the broadest, most destructive style of dueling possible. While the rival is likely to be driven by prejudice or pride, the “extremist” is driven solely by their trauma and hatred.
The narrative of Arc-V puts Shun on the same level as Kite, and both as being members of this character archetype. They are young men, driven by the pain of losing those they loved.
I think the Arc-V writing team realized that they’d stumbled upon something grand with the character of Shun Kurosaki. Not a rival, per say, but a character with all the tragic motivations of the rival who just happens to be on the side of good. We saw more of this writing in characters like Yusaku Fujiki and Takeru Homura from VRAINS, young men haunted by their trauma, and I predict we’ll see more of this archetype in the future.
Speaking of which…
VRAINS: The Anti-Villain:
VRAINS probably has one of the most simplistic rivalries of the series, and there’s a lot of beauty in that simplicity. Ryoken Kogami, aka Revolver, is the sole rival of our main character, Yusaku Fujiki. While there are other characters who have some of the same pridefulness and wish to defeat Playmaker to sate their egos (Aoi Zaizen and Go Onizuka), I think you’d agree with me in saying that they diverge a bit too far from the mold to really be considered in this stay.
Ryoken Kogami stands out in my mind as the only rival to be a full-fledged villain (and not for just a single episode or a single arc). Not an anti-hero, a morally gray hero or a shell-shocked extremist, but a full-on villain. This makes Ryoken the antithesis to Reiji: instead of emphasizing the archetype’s capacity for kindness and mentorship, Ryoken emphasizes the archetype’s potential for villainy and malevolence.
Then there’s his grand plan. Revolver isn’t just some guy who inconvenienced our main characters, this is a criminal mastermind who plans to destroy the fucking Internet. Rivals tend to be tech-savvy, so having a rival who actually opposes technological advancement (in a series about VR no less) sets Ryoken apart from not just any rival, but any villain, period.
Ryoken’s capacity for villainy is also reflected in the relationship he had with his father. I’ve neglected to mention it until now, but most rivals of Yugioh have parents who are villains, which inevitably forces the rivals to side with the hero to defeat them. We saw this with Gozaburo Kaiba, we saw this with Dr. Faker, and we saw this with Leo Akaba.
What sets Ryoken apart as not just a simple anti-hero, but the antagonist of VRAINS’ first season was that he wholeheartedly agreed with his father, Dr. Kogami, a mad scientist dedicated to exterminating the virtual world. Ryoken didn’t just sympathize with his old man’s motivations, he carried them out on his behalf. There was never a moment where he and Yusaku fought his father; in fact, he abandoned his duel with Yusaku to comfort his father on his deathbed.
VRAINS presented us with a character we feel comfortable calling a “rival” because of his personality, deck and aesthetic, but who was more of an outright villain (albeit a sympathetic one).
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As I discussed in “The Beauty of Yusaku Fujiki’s Revenge,” Yugioh VRAINS is a grim, subversive series, and this is made clear with the juxtaposition between the heroic Yusaku and the villainous Ryoken, specifically with how both view friends and family.
Yusaku more closely resembles characters like Kite and Kaiba in that he, essentially, thinks that friendship is pointless. He has no time for it, no energy for it, and no space for it in his chaotic life. The few times he does try bringing together an assortment of allies, it blows up in his face. Yusaku is also amnesiac, and doesn’t even know if he has a family.
On the other hand, Ryoken is more like the protagonists of the past in that he places immense value in companionship and friendship. He openly states that he’s only as strong as he is because of his generals, who’ve supported him every step of the way. Ryoken prioritizes family above all else, and considers it his calling to carry on his father’s legacy.
I think it’s really interesting that even though he has the most outright villainous behavior of any rival, Ryoken still manages to be sympathetic because he’s written like more of a hero. Even though he puts family first, he also struggles under that weight. He doesn’t necessarily feel guilt for what he does during the show, but he does feel guilt for not stopping the Lost Incident sooner.
And the best part about Ryoken? When considering his supposedly extremist Season 1 motivations, he’s right. His fear that the Ignis will rebel against humanity turns out to be 100% justified, and while his goal of literally deleting the Internet was taking things a tad too far, the main characters can’t help but reflect that he predicted all of this. The final villain of the show, Ai, only exists because Ryoken’s initial plans were stopped.
And in a way, that feels like such an ironically beautiful twist for Yugioh’s most subversive, morally gray series yet: the one time we get a rival who’s a genuine villain, he turns out to also be a family-loving decent human being with a strict moral code who was right about everything.
Aesthetics:
This will be a shorter section, but one I feel deserves to be spoken about, and that’s the design principles that go into creating a rival (and other rival-like characters). Seto Kaiba began his life with a rather bland design: he had cold, piercing eyes and a stylish haircut, sure, but he wore the same school uniform as everyone else. Fashion-wise, it didn’t make the cut because of how samesy it was.
Slowly, the original Yugioh manga started drifting away from the high school setting, and by the time of Duelist Kingdom, the series as a whole had adopted its signature fashion sense. With the exception of Yugi (whose uniform was so iconic it couldn’t be changed), we were given more creative designs for all the main cast.
Joey traded out the uniform for his iconic green jacket, and later, a loose, casual t-shirt.
Tristan went through a variety of neutral beige and dark brown coats.
Tea retained her pink color palette, mixed in lots of yellows, and wore more comfortable skirts and shorts.
Bakura wore a striped t-shirt under a casual sky blue jacket, which he later abandoned in favor of a black trench coat.
And finally, Kaiba settled on a thick, sleeveless white longcoat over a black shirt and pants. He wears this for most canon appearances except Duelist Kingdom (where he dons a navy blue jacket) and the Orichalcos arc (where he wears a royal purple coat).
Kaiba’s three iconic outfits (the blue jacket, the purple coat and the white longcoat) made a lot of sense given his character.
Blue symbolizes calm and peace, but it also represents intelligence and confidence. Kaiba might not be peaceful, but he is supremely confident in his earliest appearances, and he considers himself at the top of the world. Blue also contrasts very harshly with yellow and gold, both of which the anime uses to represent magic and mysticism, telling the audience that Kaiba is more skeptical of such things.
Purple is used to symbolize mystery and royalty in visual media. Fitting, as Kaiba is a dark, morbid billionaire who always hides his true intentions.
White is the most ironic here. In TV and animation, white is generally used for kind, pure-hearted souls, something which Kaiba absolutely isn’t. That being said, white is also used to represent perfection, a self-destructive ideal Kaiba does hold himself towards.
In contrast, Black usually indicates death, power and destruction; for this reason, you’ll often see it in more villainous characters. That being said, black also represents sophistication and authority, which fits well. Kaiba wearing white over black tells the audience that he’s a complex person who can’t be neatly labeled as “good” or “evil.”
This color palette of purple, blue, white and black set a precedent for all future rivals, who all continued Kaiba’s striking fashion in some major way.
Chazz and Zane both start off wearing blue; again, this indicates calm, prestige and confidence. Both men are content with their current position in the world.
Zane soon abandoned this look for a black leather jacket. Black is the only color on his palette, indicating that he’s turned completely to the dark side, so to speak.
Kite, Jack and Ryoken have similar white longcoats, and Zane’s uniform has a splash of white, indicating they hold themselves to the same level of perfection that Kaiba does. Interestingly, Kite has a black coat normally but it turns white when he duels, informing us of the duality that exists in him between good and evil.
Shark wears purple outside of school. He’s a really mysterious guy, and on top of that, he's the leader of the Barians (and, therefore, royalty).
One thing of note is that while Kaiba never actually wears this color, Gray in rivals usually represents some kind of compromise or change in themselves. Chazz wears an ashen-gray coat after he’s humbled by Jaden, Aster wears a gray coat and has to balance his childhood love of dueling with his modern goals, and Ryoken wears gray in Season 2 after Yusaku defeats him.
The only true rival who doesn’t try to match Kaiba’s fashion in any way is Reiji, and I think that’s intentional. Like I said above, Reiji fulfills a completely different function in his story than all other rivals. He’s less of an obstacle for Yuya to overcome and more of a leader from afar. It’s fitting, then, that he doesn’t have to follow in the visual trends that Kaiba established, instead wearing white sneakers, white pants, a midnight blue shirt, rectangular glasses and a blood red scarf.
Closing and Recap:
To briefly recap what I’ve explained thus far:
Kaiba created the rival archetype in Yugioh.
Chazz and Zane separated the archetype into two characters, with Zane being a more serious obstacle/mentor and Chazz being a more comedic deuteragonist.
Aster is a foil to Jaden, who competes with him, Zane and Chazz.
Jack is a rival, but with a very original arc about destiny and upwards mobility.
Shark is both a rival and a more realistic, somewhat villainous take on Joey.
Kite is a blatant homage to early Kaiba with an emphasis on guilt and sacrifice.
Shun is arguably a spin-off archetype born from Kite’s success, whose character is based more around loss and trauma than competition or wanting to “be the best.”
Sawatari parallels Chazz but with the added twist of emulating Yuya.
Reiji is a positive reconstruction of the archetype, focused on support and leadership.
And Ryoken is a more negative reconstruction of the archetype, emphasizing internal conflict and well-intentioned extremism (which leads to outright villainy).
HOLY SHIT, that’s a lot of fucking rivals!
I’ve said the word rival too many times. It doesn’t sound real anymore. Rival. Rival. Rival. See? Rival.
Anyways, this essay was a fucking blast to make. It’s been a while since I made a super long, free-form analysis like this. It was exhausting to write, but also totally worth it. I really hope you all enjoyed my rambles about my favorite anime franchise of all time, and have a great day everyone!
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