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Character name: Yami Bakura
Character canon: Yu-Gi-Oh!

Character summary:
Thousands of years ago, a ritual to create seven golden magical items, known as the Millennium Items, was conducted in ancient Egypt. These items would end an invasion from a nearby country and bring about an era of prosperity. The catch? The ritual involved killing and melting down a village into the gold to form the items allowing a great evil to surface. The sole survivor of the village promised to help that great evil to get revenge. A great battle ensued ending with the Pharaoh sealing himself in the Millennium Puzzle and the great evil and his cohort being sealed in the Millennium Ring.

Yami Bakura is the result of the two souls being mashed together in the Millennium Ring. He is part Dark God Zorc and part Thief King Bakura that have sifted together for over three thousand years. He is the Big Bad! He is the guy who wants to plunge the world into never ending darkness, but in order to do that, he needs to be reborn. In order to reborn, he needs to gather all seven Millennium Items and open the door to darkness.

Yami Bakura finds a new host in a modern day teenager, Ryou Bakura. He then spends the majority of the series trying to gather the Millennium Items in his body time share. When all the items are finally collected, he throws an elaborate tabletop game of DARKNESS to determine who will be reborn in this world: Zorc or the Pharaoh that sealed him away. In the end he loses, and that’s a wrap.

Character personality:
Yami Bakura presents himself with a meaner edge prone to hyena-like maniacal laughter as all good villains should. His personality is full of contempt and arrogance, pride and ego where morality and laws be damned. He has his own agenda, and he’s not afraid of splitting a few hairs or stealing an eye to achieve it. But even though he is an asshole, he isn’t an ‘in your face’ type of character. It has a slightly subdued, calm edge to it similar to the darkness he is so very found of.

At his inner core, Yami Bakura is a schemer with a drive to complete his goal. This scheming quality can be attributed to both essences that make up his being, a Dark God and the Thief King. What are dark gods good at? Long winded, highly audacious goals like plunging the world into darkness, of course! Goals where the end always justify the means. Goals that become almost all consuming. The Thief King is no different. He watched his entire village get slaughtered as a child and vowed vengeance. He grew up with this hatred, fought against the Pharaoh and his entire royal court with his hatred, and eventually died with it when he was sealed in the Millennium Ring. Achieving the goal is all that matters. Why the goal was important in the first place, well, sometimes that gets lost a bit.


This guy is a poster child for ‘failing forward’. There is no setback that can’t be used as an advantage. No loss that can’t be ‘better luck next time’. He is in it the for the long haul and considering his abysmal track record of winning, he should be. But with each loss, he changes his strategy to adjust. The main protagonist doesn’t like him sealing souls into D&D figures? No problem. He plays nice and helpful for the next few encounters and then kills a guy after everyone has left. He’s bad at winning card games? Then he’ll just prevent some thugs from stealing from the main character, making the clarity of what side he’s really on even more murky. Winning each match is nice and all, but as long as he is making progress to his main goal it is all in a day’s work. No hard feelings, right? Well, maybe. He doesn’t usually hold a grudge, but when one does worm its way in, man, does it stick forever.

While Bakura usually works as a one man show where possible, he has the ability to make connections to others and be a bit of a wild card. This is the human side of his soul coming into play. He’s not all Dark God. His most important connection is to his host - Ryou Bakura. The manga actually leaves a lot of room for speculation on how the two interact, but hints at a non-100% antagonistic relationship. They had their rough start with Yami Bakura sealing all of his friends’ souls into tabletop pieces. Awkward, but they seemed to move beyond that. Yami Bakura accepted a defeat to protect Ryou because he didn’t like the method of winning. For a guy that is so goal driven this is significant. While no host = no him is certainly a true statement, the scene definitely implied it was more than that. Maybe he even likes his host, respects him even to some extent. To a lesser degree, he also allied himself with one of the other antagonists against a common foe. While it resulted in both of them being lit on fire, well, it’s the thought that counts, right? He didn’t have to, but he did.

Lastly and most importantly, Yami Bakura is a total nerd. He made the last boss fight a tabletop game. Hell, yeah.

Character in Imeeji:
Without his memories, Yami Bakura will still be an asshole as both Zorc and Thief King Bakura individually were. He’s not going to have a high sense of morality or follow the rules. Winning is winning after all. However, Imeeji provides a very important piece to Yami Bakura - a goal. Get some powers. Get some memories. Pass ‘Go’. Collect $200. Not quite the same as plunging the world into darkness, but hey, he can work with it. He will be even happy to work with it. Therefore, the goal driven and failing forward aspect of his personality will not change. Go for the win even if it is riddled with loses. Who cares if it takes another three millenia. He’s got this!

What Imeeji will really change is the opportunity to connect to others. The Dark God and the Thief King lived their lives in more or less isolation, but now he’ll have this team of people he has to be grouped with. He won’t be huddled by himself and have people to lean on. Without knowing he is part Dark God or having the deep hatred for the murder of his village, he’ll actually open up a bit and perhaps even socialize. Maybe ‘my’ goal might become ‘our’ goals. Who knows? Now he’ll have the ability to plan and plot with people from the start. Be a team player, Yami Bakura! He’d actually have a lot of fun plotting with people.

Different units will bring out different personality traits, but the fact that he is on ANY team will be more important than the team he is actually on. He’ll still be gunning to win (and let’s be honest, he’ll probably bus a few teammates to win), but his team will really influence how he approaches the win.