To get this Yu-Gi-Oh! Puzzle Room world off the ground, I’ve decided to occasionally post a series of top ten lists of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh characters. And to start off, I’m going to cover my favorite villains of the franchise. This is admittedly sort of a top fourteen list due to a small group of villains being on this list. But I’m counting them as one anyway. So here we go.
10. The Big Five (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): Evil business executives are a problem everywhere, even in the Yu-Gi-Oh world. Originally the Kaiba Corp board of directors, the Big Five attempted to backstab Kaiba and made a shady deal with another villain on this list to take over the company. This of course led to Kaiba firing the Big Five, only for them to trap Kaiba in a virtual reality gaming system his company was working on. Yugi and his friends soon enter the game to rescue Kaiba, forcing our band of evil executives to take matters into their own hand and enter the game as the powerful Five Headed Dragon. Yugi and Kaiba’s combined power crushes the Big Five and traps their mind in cyberspace (the implication being that their bodies couldn’t handle the strain of the attack). But they return again the well done yet poorly placed Virtual World arc to try and steal to bodies of Yugi and his friends to escape their digital hell, using various Duel Monsters as avatars to get the job done.
9. Yami Marik (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): Marik Ishatr’s dark personality will probably be remembered by many as one of the most psychotic villains in Yu-Gi-Oh history. Yami Marik was created by the trauma the young Marik suffered when he underwent the Tomb Keeper initiation ritual of his family. The evil personality ended up taking on a life of its own due to the power of the Millennium Rod. And one of his first acts was brutally murdering Marik’s father (cut from the dub). During the Battle City Tournament, Yami Marik enjoyed torturing his opponents in shadow duels before finally finishing them off with the Winged Dragon of Ra, making him as sadistic as one of the demons out of the movie Hellraiser.
8. Z-one (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s): The main villain of the 5D’s series and the sole survivor of a post-apocalyptic Earth. Originally Z-one was a scientist who attempted to keep the world from crumbling by transforming himself into a living copy of Yusei Fudo. But playing the hero proved to be futile, as the Zero Reverse still brought the human race to extinction. Left bitter, Z-one turns his efforts to drastically changing history by destroying Neo Domino in the past. Z-one would’ve had a higher spot on this list if he had actually been a darker version of Yusei. But as he was just some nameless scientist that only turned himself into a cheap copy, he’s not as interesting a villain as he could’ve been.
7. Maximillion Pegasus (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): One of the first major villains of the original saga. Using both his wealth and the power of the Millennium Eye, Pegasus attempted to take over Kaiba Corp and forced Yugi to take part in his Duelist Kingdom tournament. All in the name of trying to bring back his late wife (in the manga at least, Pegasus only wished to get his hands on Kaiba’s holographic technology to create a life-like image of his wife). After his defeat in the anime, Pegasus returned as an ally to Yugi and his friends. He later went on to become a helpful recurring character in GX.
6. Dartz (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): One thing I’ve learned over the years is that good and evil is a matter of perception. One person’s image of evil could be another’s image of good. Dartz was one of the anime characters that taught me that lesson. Once the king of the fabled city of Atlantis, Dartz saw his own kingdom fall to ruin due to the power of the Orichalcos. After being forced to kill his own wife when she transformed into a hideous monster, Dartz was tricked by the Orichalcos into thinking that the human race was evil and needed to be wiped out. Thus he tired using an evil entity called the Great Leviathan to do the job.
5. Akhenaden (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): Probably the most infamous villain on this list. Akenaden is really the one who started the whole chain of events in the original saga. During the time of Pharaoh Atem’s father, Akhenaden proposed the creation of the Millennium Items to repel marauders that wanted to ransack the kingdom. But what Akhenaden conveniently neglected to mention to the former pharaoh was that the creation of these items required ninety-nine human sacrifices. Akhenaden and his men slaughtered the village of Kul Elna, transmuting the bodies of the victims into the gold that made up the Millennium Items (which would make said items like the Philosopher’s Stones from Fullmetal Alchemist). Afterwards, Akhenaden became the original wielder of the Millennium Eye and one of the Pharaoh’s six priests. In the end though, Akhenaden’s demons got the better of him. He betrayed Atem and became the High Priest of Shadows, all in the name of making his own son king.
4. Yubel (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX): In the distant past, Yubel was a human who willingly became a Duel Monster in order to protect Jaden Yuki’s past life incarnation, the Supreme King. But over the years, Yubel became a little too obsessed with Jaden and ended up hospitalizing one of his friends. The young Jaden launched Yubel into space in the hopes she would gain a power that would restore her sanity, failing to realize that extended periods alone in a tiny space capsule only makes insanity worse. And it certainly didn’t help that Yubel ended up being bombarded by the Light of Destruction. Yubel returns to Earth years later to pursue Jaden once more. But in the end, Jaden fuses himself with Yubel, purifying her of the Light of Destruction and restoring her sanity (more or less).
3. Rex Goodwin (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s): Right off the bat, I knew Goodwin was bad news when I first saw 5D’s. Of course when he started helping Yusei and his friends against the Dark Signers I thought, “You know, maybe he’s not so bad at all”. But I didn’t trust Goodwin entirely. It always seemed like he had something up his sleeve. Then when it was later revealed that Goodwin was only using the Signers to gain the powers of the Crimson Dragon and the Earthbound Immortals so he could become a god, I wasn’t at all shocked.
2. Aporia/Three Emperors (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s): Bar none, my favorite 5D’s villain(s). Aporia was one of the only four humans to survive Meklord apocalypse. Through Aporia, we witness the events that led to the human race’s extinction and see the tragedies that shaped his life. After his death, Z-one sends Aporia back as three androids that embodied the great despairs of his life in order to pave the way for the Arc Cradle to come back through time. When it gets right down to it, Aporia was just a tragic figure that went about the wrong way to save the future.
1. Yami Bakura (Original Yu-Gi-Oh!): How could this guy not be my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh villain of all time? He’s pretty much the arch nemesis of the franchise’s original hero, the Megatron to Yami Yugi/Atem’s Optimus Prime. Yami Bakura was there since almost the beginning of the original saga, watching from the shadows and biding his time. Waiting for the right moment to achieve his ultimate goal of shrouding the world in darkness. In the end, it was revealed that Yami Bakura was actually the demon that Pharaoh Atem had given his life to seal away thousands of years ago, Zorc Necrophades.
That pretty much covers it. I may do more in-depth posts on some of these characters at later dates. So stay tuned.
