While Yugi maybe the main character of the first part Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, its most important character is actually Seto Kaiba by a wide margin. This might come as a surprise given that Yugi lent his name to both the franchise and the card game based on it. But while Yugi may be the face of the series, Kaiba has a much more lasting impact on the rules of the game. Given how massive the card game is to this day, Kaiba actually has more of an impact on the franchise than its ostensibly protagonist.
In the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh!, called Duelist Kingdom, the game’s rules are much looser. Nearly any monster can be summoned for free on the field, with the exception of Fusion and Ritual monsters. In addition, depending on where the duel takes place, different monsters will have their inherent strength increased or decreased. This is in keeping with the generally more flexible game mechanics, with cards able to interact in ways outside of their standard effects. For example, in one game, Yugi can’t defeat an underwater strategy until he uses his monster to attack the moon, lower the tides, and weaken his opponent’s water monsters. These games are fun to watch, but don’t translate into real-life games. Kaiba changed that forever.
Kaiba has shaped the way Yu-Gi-Oh!
In the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kaiba holds a grand competition known as the Battle City Tournament, in which he sets a new set of rules for the game. These rules include many tournament-specific rules, such as players having to bet their rarest card in a duel. But more importantly, it also includes many rules that will make the game more balanced in the future, such as forcing players to pay tribute to summon powerful monsters and increase their total life points to 4000 instead. since 2000. With these new rules introduced, the more liberal form of Duelist Kingdom games has become a thing of the past, giving way to a game form that persisted throughout much of the franchise’s history. .
Later Yu-Gi-Oh! The series will add their own novelties to the game, such as new summoning mechanics and monster types. But these new rules retain the general basis of Kaiba’s Battle City rule system. With this more codified rule system, games became more about the interactions of the cards based on the actual effects of the cards rather than their general theme. Some of the craziest parts of Duelist Kingdom matches have even been tweaked to fit Kaiba’s rule system, with terrain buffs turning into Field spells and Attack the Moon becoming cards. of itself.
Without Kaiba, the gameplay of Yu-Gi-Oh! franchises are known for never being born. In the later series, it is implied that Kaiba was also a major force behind making the Duel Monsters game so ubiquitous in Yu-Gi-Oh!’s society. All this makes Kaibathe impact of Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise much larger than Yugi‘s and make him the most important character in the series.
