Somebody Else's Problem

In the Yu-Gi-Oh manga, there are FOUR notable Bakuras. In the anime, there are only TWO. Confused? You should be.

Let’s specify, in order of appearance:

• Ryo Bakura - the host; a Japanese schoolboy
• Dark Bakura - the spirit of the Millennium Ring
• The White Wizard - Monster World NPC
• The King of Thieves - Ancient Egyptian graverobber

The first two appear in the anime as well, of course, although the characterisation is different and Ryo is less prominent. The third was left out. I’ll talk about him in a later post!

What about the Thief King?

Technically, he’s included in the anime. But during that version of the Memory World RPG, he’s completely controlled by Dark Bakura as a player. He only appears as himself twice, and has literally no agency. We first see him in chains, too exhausted to do anything until he gets possessed. The second time is right before his (first) death, where he has no idea where he is and what’s going on. And then he turns into sand. Sucks to be him.

In other words, the anime erased the thief’s character to such an extreme degree that I can’t consider him notable at all. Sorry. That what we’re shown is nothing like his aggressive manga counterpart implies that he was possessed the first time around too, and never had any input of his own in the events of the story.

It’s a fairly common complaint (which I definitely share!) that Ryo’s role was reduced in the anime, but at least he has a personality and gets to hang around for a while. The thief is arrested, possessed and killed, with no opportunity to make any choices. Anything else we see him do, including declaring himself a king, is all Dark Bakura. Even his name is uncertain; it’s Atem who starts calling him Bakura because he knows who’s playing him.

And that’s one of the many reasons I don’t like the anime version of that arc. Because if you screw a character over even more than Ryo Bakura, you have gone too far.