Yugi Muto [武藤遊戯] (
awishforfriends) wrote2018-03-01 09:49 pm
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Notes on Yugi
➤ Personality Traits
- Yugi is far smarter than people think he is. It isn't just quick thinking, though he is good at that, but actual intelligence -- Yugi's extremely sharp and smart. The problem is, Yugi's mind has always been framed in the "typical Japanese school" setting, and at school, the tedium and boredom of it is what made him do bad rather than the content. Or to put it a simpler way, Yugi is so intelligent that his poor grades and failure in schools wasn't because he didn't know or couldn't learn, but because the work was so tedious and easy for him that he simply couldn't make himself actually do the work, even if he knew the answers -- and if he didn't know the answers, he couldn't bring himself to figure it out, either, even though he had the ability. Because of this, he appears dull and unfocused, an easily distracted and stupid kid.
It's under less typical public-school-type lessons that Yugi's intelligence truly shines. When he's being challenged and the lessons are brought up to his level, Yugi's an extremely hard worker and able to focus without much trouble at all. Since he's never been given this chance, however, Yugi doesn't actually realize he's as smart as he is, and is often down on himself because of his poor grades whenever the subject comes up.The theory that Yugi is actually incredibly smart comes from a few things: his skill in dueling and with puzzles is the most obvious, but Yugi also tends to act as a guide, explaining a lot of things very nonchalantly and easily and showing a lot of knowledge on quite a few different subjects. Another slight nod (since anime uses room designs to show personality) is the fact that he has some more "mature" paintings in his room (a landscape, abstract art) that most teenage boys wouldn't really care about.
- While he is mostly the type of cheerful person that he seems to be, Yugi is far from innocent. His fears and insecurities are best described here.
- Yugi has a lot of different types of clothes in his closet, as well as a very tall mirror, which implies he's at least somewhat into fashion or his own personal style.
Also Jou's shirt got mixed in there, how did anyone think those two were straight. - From the well-kept plant in his room, he also seems to be at least mildly interested in them/gardening.
- He's also never brought up what happened with Yami in the past (S0, where he'd black out and Yami would do terrible things). While he isn't mad or upset about it anymore, that's still a painful chapter in his life he's never really been able to talk about to anyone in depth.
- Though Yugi is a person who wants to make friends with whoever he can, he understands now that he can easily fail at that, because sometimes, you only have one chance to truly show that you're there, and if you can't... then all your attempts can be undone. It might not always be your only shot, but it's your best, and if you flub it, it can become even harder to do. This was mostly learned from Kaiba himself, as the one time that Kaiba tentatively opened up and tried to connect, Yugi fell flat and failed completely at responding. Kaiba made an attempt to lean on him, and Yugi missed his chance to support him -- and when he saw what he missed, saw that Yami could do yet another thing that Yugi himself failed, he felt an intense guilt for it. It's neither his fault nor a surprise -- at the time, he was dealing with his own emotional struggles, including the major one of feeling like a complete fraud of a duelist because Yami was using his name. But even so, Yugi hated that he failed so hard in that moment to befriend someone he was trying so hard to help.
But guilt doesn't always breed surrender. Yami supported Kaiba and showed him what he needed, but Yugi learned from that too -- that even if he isn't at fault, if he truly wants to reach someone, he has to give something of himself, even at times where it's painful or hard to do so. He also gained something vitally important then that he had been missing -- a piece of his own Duelist Soul. Yami taught Kaiba that he could be relied upon, but he also taught Yugi that duels were a way to see into someone's soul and to deal with what's laid bare from that -- something that Yugi might have thought of or believed by then, but never truly took to heart. - One thing Yugi is still dealing with is the shift of "authority". He was raised most of his life fairly normally, so the idea of "adults are someone to listen to" was heavily ingrained in him, especially in a culture like Japan's. (To the point that, in Season 0, one basically steamrollered him into giving up his Puzzle briefly to display in the museum, even though Yugi desperately didn't want to.) However, with everything that's happened and with adults themselves being harmful forces, Yugi is having to struggle with his old, taught values, the realization that not all adults need to be -- or should be -- obeyed, and that he's in a particularly unique position to push back against them and be taken seriously even despite his age. It's still a struggle, but he's trying his best to figure it out.
- This Yugi IS canon, and in canon, his parents are alive -- his father lives outside of Japan for business (or is "away all the time", depending) and never appears in the manga or anime, and while his mother DOES appear and is stated to be living with Yugi and Grandpa, she appears a total of twice in the entire run of the original series' anime and once in the manga (and ISN'T EVEN NAMED). On top of that, the manga appearance was a nasty person, berating Yugi for not studying and hitting him with a ladle. The studying part is very Japanse parent, so that's nothing special, but the ladle is the more problematic part to me. The original Yu-Gi-Oh! very, VERY clearly established a serious take on physical child abuse through Jounouchi and Kaiba, and while Yugi's mom was an early, one-off joke before these things were addressed, even in hindsight it's extremely uncomfortable. Since it's clearly meant to be a gag, I don't feel right calling Yugi's mom "abusive" (especially since we only see her a combined three times over both versions!), but at the same time, I don't really want to have anything to do with her.
So for the sake of this Yugi/this journal, this is how his parents are being handled:
His father lives outside of Japan and Yugi basically doesn't know him, as he moved for business when Yugi was very small.
His mother was a lovely, if overbearing, woman that he cared for, but she died when he was in elementary school.
This leaves Yugi with just his Grandpa as his only real parent.
SCHOOL
There are multiple reasons for this, but all lead to a single result: Yugi doesn't care because no one else does.
As proven in his games, his duels, and the types of puzzles he can complete, Yugi is smart. He's an incredibly sharp kid who can pick up on and strategize quickly, and even if Yami took over for most of his life, he's still no less skilled. He's also insatiable when it comes to things he enjoys or has an interest in, devouring everything in those subjects that he can get his hands on and looking for more.
And yet, these don't show in school. There's two main reasons.
The first is that Yugi is too smart, as well as being a fairly hands-on person. Because his mind is sharp and he's used to doing complicated things (like putting together models) or thinking through complicated things (riddle books or puzzle games), Yugi has an issue with trying to do things that are "too dumb" for him. His schoolwork is too easy overall for him, which means he finds no challenge or investment in it and leads to him having an immensely hard time actually... paying attention to it. The fact that schoolbooks, schoolwork, and lectures are informative first with basically no engagement only makes it worse, since Yugi gets fidgety about things, especially since what he's being told he may already know. The result is that he often dozes or checks out during lectures, struggles to get through his work even though he knows he needs to, and just drifts over to things that can keep his attention and challenge him.
The second is because Yugi's school is awful, and with awful teachers. As shown in S0, basically the entire staff of that place is terrible, with putting down or torturing students, calling them idiots, being nasty, rude and abusive. This is only the sample directly shown in canon, but a school that has a principal who belittled and then tried to expel students for being "dumb" is not one that hires caring people, and so every teacher Yugi had in that school was a terrible teacher. Even if his "problems" were brought up, they never addressed how to fix them, only putting all the burden on him -- just try harder, get more sleep, just focus, all things that do nothing to actually help keep Yugi engaged. Because of that, and because the school does nothing about problem students (Jounouchi and Honda were not punished for bullying Yugi -- and then, when Ushio stepped up, the school did nothing to stop him, either), Yugi has absolutely no trust in his teachers, and that's made him dislike school all the more, which leads to even less effort on his part.
Yugi could be a very good student at minimum! He's smart enough and dedicated enough. But because of all the issues he's suffered and how his own needs are ignored, his issues prevent him from doing the majority of the work and his apathy prevents the rest, because "Why even bother?"