Re: Kiir's Yu-Gi-Oh! Corner (Reply #560 on: March 30, 2025, 06:55:03 pm)

TOP 5 CHARACTERS

Honourable Mention: Zwijo Zwil Velgear

Zwijo is the rival of this show and the first thing we learn about him is that he was Yudias' superior officer and that Yudias watched him die on the battlefield. He of course comes back and serves as the first main antagonist before flipflopping between ally and enemy every time he dies and comes back to life. He has a lot less screentime than most rivals across the franchise on account of constantly dying or just doing his own thing elsewhere but his relationship with Yudias always remains among the most poignant relations in the show. His deck is made up of dark galactic warriors with Greek names and he fuses his soul with them once or twice to pilot them like a mech. However what shoots him up the ranking for me is that he has an amnesia arc where he ends up running a bakery with a woman (who's twice his height btw let's go we love tall women she's my 7th favourite character after Zwijo) who has a crush on him and wanted to live out a bakery AU together. His design for this part is just so cute, it endears me to him soooo much

5. Yudias Velgear

Usually the protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh end up being my favourites, but GO RUSH!! just has so many funny women in it that Yudias has to settle for fifth. Yudias is my naive baby boy who, despite watching his friends die in war, somehow manages to always be the most optimistic person in the room. He is genuinely such a delight and I want nothing but the best for him. His deck introduces the new "Galaxy" type into the TCG, featuring alien-like creatures with his two main aces being the swordsman Transamu Rainac and the dragon(?) Galactica Oblivion. While I admittedly think his deck is a little less interesting than others' in this show (I LOVE Transamu Rainac but Oblivion is kinda eh to me), I am always happy to see him on screen. And of course, as common of Yu-Gi-Oh protagonists, he gets his fair share of being corrupted and irreversibly changed by dark forces. We love to see it.

4. Yuna Goha

From what I've seen, Yuna might be one of the most hated characters in the show. She's the heiress of Goha Company, a toy company that went on to sell Rush Duel products. The protagonists are hired to find her after she's suddenly gone missing, just to find she willingly ran away to join a gang of ruffians because she had a big lesbian crush on their leader. She's a character whose motivations are driven by the desire to capture the attention or help out the people she has a crush on , but unlike most characters who are like this, the writers weren't allowed to make her bisexuality explicit and thus she is more known for committing "Women's Wrongs" (something that every girl in this show does btw I've never seen a show with more problematic girls in my life), which I personally love her for. She spends the whole show teetering on the edge of hero and villainess and fandom HATES her for not having a formal redemption arc. She initially uses a "celebrity"-themed deck before adding a spellcaster flare in there after being inspired by her second big crush. She's one of those characters who doesn't get too many duels, but is always playing a part in the background regardless. Why duel when she can simply get things done with her CEO powers?

3. Epoch Kamijo

Epoch is introduced in Season 2 as someone who seems like a bit character - she's a child who's the heiress (yeah this show has a lot of those!) of a gear-making company who, despite being loud and bossy, has so much anxiety that she hides herself in a cardboard box at all times. Yudias meets her by chance and is asked to become her Rush Duel mentor by her butler. Her deck is dice- and luck-themed, which she initially rigs by using HERSELF as the dice to always give herself the best outcome. Once she goes through her character development, gaining enough confidence to break free from her cardboard shackles, she vows to "make her own luck" and joins the protagonist's exclusive group across space in Season 3. She doesn't get too many duels across the show, but she's still a really fun character and does the luck gimmick way better than any character in the franchise has done. Her good rolls feel way more earned than Joey Wheeler's ever did.

2. Yuamu Ohdo

Easily my favourite of the three protagonists, Yuamu is the cunning big boss of her family's extraterrestrial-hunting business. For the first two seasons she's easily the best duelist of the main three (at once point throwing random cards from a newly opened pack into her deck to throw off an opponent and still winning with them) and is always two steps ahead of anyone across the entire cast. Her deck is technology & dragon themed, her ace being the very cool "Blue-Tooth Burst Dragon". She has the honour of being the first girl in Yu-Gi-Oh history to duel in not one, but TWO season finales! To highlight just how kind the show was to her, in terms of total duels across the series, the only characters she has fewer duels than are the other protagonists and Joey Wheeler (whose claim to fame is that he was in a show with 225 episodes - Yuamu only has 2 fewer duels than him!). Here's to hoping this is a good sign for women in the future of Yu-Gi-Oh.

1. Rovian Kirishima

A character so good it inspired me to make an OC based on her... Rovian is initially framed as the second major "villain" that the protagonists face, being the leader of a group of ruffians called the Rovian Bandits who "terrorize" the hidden underground city where the aliens have been quarantined. Though in actuality, she and her gang have been trying to use Rush Dueling to make the locals' lives better. She's the first major wall the protagonists face in the show, managing to defeat Yuhi and Yuamu in a 2v1. Her whole thing is that she constantly speaks in song/poetry (her deck naturally follows a bard theme as well) in ways that may be nonsense or prophetic and I personally loved every moment of it. She unfortunately becomes a support character after Season 1, becoming the designated explosive curry chef, but that doesn't stop me from liking her. My life will be over once they put her in Duel Links.